Entertainment News

Buster Daniels, the coruscating star from Murrambateman, has announced an ambitious Melbourne / Sydney tour of his very own cabaret, Nancy Boy, accompanied by Mark Fitzgibbon on piano.

In what may be one of the first direct tests on the Federal Government’s sedition laws, Buster Daniels will perform in a three-week season in the Melbourne Midsumma Festival, and then one week in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Arts Festival.

Buster is rumoured to be in private talks with the Attorney-General’s Department to allow him immunity from the sedition laws. “It’s true. In the show I do incite a call to arms against the imperialist aggression of the West, but I do it in a loving, caring, mercenary way,” he said.

Featuring songs by Joe Jackson, Guns N’ Roses, Johnny Cash and Daniel Maloney, this is bareback cabaret at its most infectious.

“I embarked on my career in cabaret out of protest,” says Buster. “I was protesting against the phalanx of anonymous pretty gay men who had sought out the medium to tell a very grateful audience (mostly composed of Mum, Dad, Bestest Friend and Aunty Janice) their very limited life story in dated song. I began to ask myself; what business does a 21 year-old from Paddington have singing about a Trolley Car? Not to mention the execrable versions of those songs written by Mr Sondheim often for aging menopausal divas at the cross-roads of THE CHANGE”.

Buster Daniels was born and raised on a farm in the semi-rural town of Murrambateman, a hamlet on the outskirts of Canberra. “My up-bringing was idyllic. Summers were spent shearing, delousing, neutering … Ah, Papa took such pride in his appearance.”

“But I must admit, I became miserable on the farm. It was very isolated and with the droughts, the floods, and all that economic uncertainty depression was rife. It seemed every other week a farm owner was found hanging in his shed, which always confused me because to commit suicide in Murrambateman is a rather redundant act,” he said.

But now Buster has moved far away from his in-bred roots to light the stage of Melbourne’s most intimate performance venue, The Butterfly Club, and at Sydney’s most venerable venue, Bar Me. “Oh, I adore both of those places, I really do. They’re both so intimate and the audience is so close to the stage that on a clear night I can often make out some of the gentlemens’ religions!”

So what is Buster’s show about? “Well, I’m looking at the big issues with this show, like how do you have your way with five bi-curious plumbers while simultaneously making them all feel special and needed? I’m also asking the questions that really need to be asked like, when will the pink polo with the up-turned collar die its final grisly death? Who keeps employing Jeannie Little as an “entertainer”? And exactly how close are scientists to finding the genetic link between homosexuality and anything connected with a Minogue?”

There are also some fond reminiscences too. “I dedicate a section of my show to a man who was a seminal influence in my life, Fr Aloysius. He was a catholic priest at Marist Brothers College Canberra who instructed me in religious education and sometimes – if I was particularly fortunate – in physical education. He was a very hands-on sort of teacher. Very kinaesthetic I think we say now. This fine man taught me the difference between right and wrong and how to manipulate the line in between. An art used deftly himself later in a Court of Law. Fr Aloysius did indeed take me under his wing…he took me under a lot of things in fact…”

Buster’s look and manner are quite distinct, although it has been said that with his soft-spoken voice and deconstructed formal glam he has a little in common with drag artistes. “Oh no! I don’t understand the grotesquerie of drag, actually. I mean why would an audience spend an evening watching a sexless alien jump around in garish costumes to old Cher songs, when they can stay at home and watch the DVD of Cher doing that herself?”

And what of his performance style? “Well I have been compared to many but I think I’m happiest with being described as a cross between Julie Andrews circa Victor/Victoria and a rabid, pansexual Alsatian.”

Melbourne

The Butterfly Club
204 Bank Street, South Melbourne
Dates: Thursday 26 Jan to Sunday 12 Feb (performances Thur to Sun)
Time: All shows at 8.30 pm
Tickets: $20; $15 concession-holders
Bookings: Telephone 03 9690 2000 or online at www.thebutterflyclub.com

Sydney

Bar Me
154 Brougham Street (corner of William Street) Kings Cross
Dates: Wednesday 22 Feb to Saturday 25 Feb
Time: All shows at 10.00 pm
Tickets: $20; $15 concession-holders / $30; $25 with light meal
Bookings: Telephone 02 9368 0894