Grimm Cremorne Theatre, QPAC Until September 29 ★★★★ Once upon a time there was a plucky young Brisbane theatre company called Shake & Stir, known throughout the land for their talent at staging commercially successful shows. One of their smartest tricks was to adapt famous but out-of-copyright properties such as Frankenstein and A Christmas Carol, thus maximising brand recognition while avoiding the expense of royalties. Their latest effort in that vein is a lusty and rib-tickling revue that mashes up German folktales from the collections of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
Wolf clique: Brendan Maclean and Nelle Lee in Shake and Stir’s Grimm in Brisbane Festival 2024. Credit: Joel Devereux It’s well known that the original stories are way more violent and ribald than the versions found on children’s bookshelves. Grimm leans into this.
Nick Cave’s murder ballad Red Right Hand features prominently; toes, tongues and other bits of people get chopped off; and the language is...
well, not the kind of stuff they say on Play School . A lot of it is rude, and some of it’s in German (with surtitles) – which adds to the overall mood of Weimar decadence. Queensland Theatre associate artistic director Daniel Evans has helmed a voyage into the unconscious by way of Cabaret’s Kit Kat Club.
The script’s guiding idea seems to be that fairy tales are fluid beasts, constantly in flux through being retold, rather than set in stone. Thus Cinderella, or “shputtel” (played by .