Mixed Drinks

Brett Haylock must be racking up those frequent flyer points. The charming front-of-house host of smash hit shows La Clique and La Soiree, he’ll barely have time to open up the latest London incarnation of Soiree before it’s back to much warmer climates to launch a brand new show, Club Swizzle.

Making its international debut at Sydney Opera House, Swizzle is an opportunity for the creative team to put into practice all they’ve learned from the ten years La Soiree has been travelling the globe.

“It’s a process I’ve never been through before. Not like this,” Haylock explains. “The nature of the way La Clique and La Soiree came about was I’d see an artist and we’d take the material that artist created and adapt and massage it into place. With Swizzle, we’ve got this luxury; we’ve brought together all these artists we’ve wanted to work with whose material wasn’t really suitable in the La Soiree format. And we’re madly creating this new thing.”

Haylock promises fans of the older shows that Swizzle will still share La Soiree and La Clique’s spirit of chaos and energy, but the focus of the setting will be less on the theatre space and more on the bar.

“A lot of the colourful characters I’ve met on my travels, the natural habitat for them is a late-night bar. It’s reassuring and comforting. I don’t know many people who don’t feel more comfortable in the proximity of a bar.

“The new format gives us the opportunity to work with a whole host of acrobats in particular and create all this material that specifically relates to a bar. The atmosphere in the room will be electric. I’m bringing a number of artists who are at the top of their game, I’ve popped them all into the same room and locked them in and we’ll see what magic comes out of it.”

Club Swizzle will feature the diva skills of Meow Meow and Ali McGregor, who’ll both do limited runs with the show; the acrobatic expertise of The Bartenders – Tom Flanagan from Tom Tom Crew, Daniel Catlow from Scotch and Soda and Joren Dawson from Soap – and the late night lounge lizard, comedian and compere Murray Hill.

Haylock says he’s keeping things simple and sexy for audiences eager for a dose of Club Swizzle, so over-arching themes or complex narratives.

“We bring five hundred people together who have never met each other and for that one moment, those two hours, they are all in this thing together and share that experience. Every show is different because of the audience involved. I love to think that at every show we drag someone in who is completely unsuspecting.”