The Supper Club

The Wau Wau Sisters may be based in the US, but they've practically been calling Australia home for the last couple of years, so frequently have they visited. The bawdy burlesque duo, which consists of half-sisters Adrienne Truscott and Tanya Gagne, have performed their hit show The Wau Wau Sisters' Last Supper in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and now it's finally Brisbane's turn.

Truscott has been blown away by how warmly Aussie audiences have embraced The Last Supper. “They seem to really love it,” she says. “We break the so-called fourth wall a lot and play around with the audience a lot, and we find that in general Australians are very game to be part of the show. We love it, and I think they do too.”

The Last Supper's previous runs around Australia have been met with plenty of admiration. The show is a difficult one to pigeonhole – the Sisters are often described as burlesque, but Truscott is quick to clarify that they're “not the knickers-and-fans burlesque.” Instead, they experiment with “acrobatic striptease” and ad-libbed comedy. “It's a really good, boisterous time,” says Truscott of their show.

As one would expect from the title, The Last Supper has a lot to say about religion. According to Truscott, the show opens with a bit of riffing on Catholic schoolgirls, drawn from Gagne's own experiences at religious education institutions. It then weaves through some interesting territory before building up to the titular event: “We recreate a last supper, the way we sort of cheekily imagine it, which is room at the table for a lot more people than just a bunch of white guys,” says Truscott. “We just think about who gets an invitation, and if it really was the last supper on Earth, how would you spend it?” She suspects it would be a looser affair than the sedate dinner mentioned in scripture: “We think it would be a bit of a bacchanal!”

Interestingly, the Sisters haven't had much of a chance to perform the show in their home country – they've been working mostly in the UK and Australia over the last year. There have been a few US shows, says, Truscott: “We did it down in Kentucky, we did it in New York, we did it in LA.” How did the overwhelmingly Christian audiences take The Last Supper? “It goes over [okay],” she says. “Some of it has to do with who books us – they kind of know what they're getting into. I think we do it all with our tongue firmly in our cheek and a sense of humour and celebration.”

Even in Australia, they've heard some discontented rumblings from certain religious organizations within the community, although it hasn't come to anything yet. “When we did [the show] at the Opera House, there was some organization that threatened to protest, but it seemed to be all online and they never had the courage or energy to show up, which I was greatly disappointed by,” laughs Truscott. Australia, she says, doesn't seem as po-faced about religion as her home country: “I don't feel the same overbearing thud of religion in Australia at all.”

Now she's just hoping that Brisbane audiences will join the Wau Wau Sisters for a last supper. “It's a good dinner party, I can tell you that,” she says.