Sister Act

Once upon a time, there were three fairly odd sisters who lived in a small town in Queensland called Esk. They spent their leisure time listening to the wireless and learning the songs they heard on guitar, tuba, keyboard, musical saw, toilet brush and other household items they like the sound of. One day, while practicing a Michael Jackson tune, they were discovered by a neighbour, Earl, whose Rottweiler Gordon had stopped to defecate on their daisy patch.

“As Earl waited outside our house for Gordon to finish his business,” explains Mourne Kranskey (Annie Lee), the oldest of the sisters, “Earl thought up his own, and before long we left home on our first tour.” That was around 2004. Since then, Mourne, Eve and Dawn have toured nationally and internationally in their 1958 Morris Major, just last year travelling to Holland, Portugal and Belgium. Though it can be good for their relationships at times, all this travelling together can also get a little trying.

“Travelling together is nice when we can all enjoy a game of I Spy,” says Mourne. “Otherwise, Eve has a tendency to nod off and stay sleeping for some hours with her leg in the way of the gear stick, which can make things both difficult and dull. Dawn never joins in with the games, but rather makes continuous entries into the ledger she keeps that contains a variety of data entries on the numbers of dogs, cats, birds, yellow cars and telegraph poles that we pass. This also can be dull during travel, but makes for a good read with a cup of tea and lamington when we arrive at our motel room.”

Mourne says she and her sisters do tend to prefer the smaller towns over the big cities, for their familiarity. “We do like the small towns as they remind us of home. Some cities can be very big and have parking meters and traffic lights. We prefer to park in paddocks and be guided by the light of the moon. In the small towns you can always get a good pub meal for eight dollars fifty. In the cities we can only afford the chips.”

They have been touring their most recent show, Piece Of Cake, regionally, and will be taking it to the Sydney Comedy Festival in April. Set to feature new songs and travel tales, Mourne describes the show this way: “A piece of cake is always a tasty treat at parties, and that's what we'd like to serve our audience. We've also got a biscuit tin of new songs and stories of our recent travels to share with the lovely people of Sydney, and we are looking forward to meeting the people there again.”

WHAT: The Kransky Sisters: Piece of Cake
WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 24 to Saturday 27 April, Everest Theatre