The Kransky Sisters: Heard it on the Wireless

Featuring Annie Lee, Christine Johnston and Carolyn Johns, as Mourne, Eve and Dawn Kransky

Although touted as a musical comedy trio The Kransky Sisters aren’t trying to be funny at all. In fact they’re touring Australia to perform serious ‘popular music’ to their audiences.

From Esk in rural Queensland these three matronly sisters (biological sisters Mourne and Eve, and half sister Dawn) are traveling from state to state in their 1958 Morris Major and on the way (reception permitting) they listen to songs on their wireless, which they then practice and perform.

The show apparently opens with a slide show of the sisters’ road trip so far. I say apparently because the venue seating was such that the audience in my corner of the room had zero view of this part of the stage. The rest of the audience laughed, so I presume this was indeed entertaining.

The rest of the show follows a pattern of Mourne (the eldest, and marginally tyrannical sister) telling rather bizarre and often slightly creepy stories (echoed by a down trodden and sexually frustrated Eve), which is then followed by an improbably relevant song.

The Kransky Sisters cover songs from Michael Jackson, Johnny Cash, Slade, Art Garfunckel, Jim Croce, Steve Miller Band, SugaBabes, to ACDC, Eurythmics, Steppenwolf and Talking Heads. A personal favourite was a precisely enunciated ‘Pop Music’ by M, accompanied by some rather flash tambourine choreography.

Disturbingly naïve the sisters deadpan their truly original and unconventional versions of the songs, without a hint that they have any idea about what they are indeed singing about.

Aside from an unassumingly brilliant performance by Dawn on the Tuba, most of the instruments are as oddball and dated as the sisters themselves. A 60’s reed keyboard, musical saw, kitchen pot, an assortment of toilet brushes and a host of other bizarre music makers and shakers all feature.

The three spinsters are stuck in a fascinating time warp, and although they read magazines to copy the looks of Angelina Jolie and Joan Collins, their unsophisticated gothic look is rather more akin to Morticia from the Adams Family dressed in Opshop clothing.

Dawn (who is said to have rarely played before an audience having recently been recruited since sister Ava joined the marching military band) was mesmorising. Tight fisted and painstakingly awkward she watches the other two through her thick glasses in bored disdain and detachment, and utters not a word (although she belts out a few lines with a rather appealing voice), and yet, for me, steals the show.

Clever and meticulous in it’s detail, the show is unflinching in it’s character world, not even after the final clapping and closing when the audience files out and the sisters move to the door to sell tea towels, mementos and CDs of their music.

The show from this award-winning act, is only an hour, and it goes by in an instant, leaving you wanting more. Suitable for any audience, this is a must see show with universal appeal.

The Kransky Sisters: Heard it on the Wireless

August 20 – September 5