This burlesque troupe did a residency at Luna Park. The cabaret show that grew out of it is wild

It’s tricky to describe a Finucane & Smith show; no single genre encapsulates it. For co-founder and self-confessed “hustler of hope” Moira Finucane , it’s an “extraordinarily diverse, wild, unleashed ‘finucanelove’ version of cabaret”.

Three decades on from its humble beginnings in the nightclubs of Melbourne, the troupe features dancers – including belly and butoh – divas, circus and burlesque performers, First Nations singers, contemporary takes on carny folk and more.

Its latest show, Dance Palace, premieres at St Kilda’s Luna Park this weekend, created while the company was the amusement park’s artist-in-residence.

“You will literally see almost every kind of art form here,” says Finucane. “You will see people clothed and unclothed. You will hear belters and delicate torch songs. You will hear mandolin. You will hear screaming opera. So long as the mix is exceptional.”

Over the past 30 years, the group has made 36 full-length shows, presented in 19 countries and toured extensively in Australia. It has won the Patrick White Playwright Award, nine Green Room Awards, International Theatre Institute’s CHAMACO Award for International Presentation of the Year in Cuba, and the Climakaze Award in the US for Outstanding Art in Climate.

The Smith of the group’s title is co-founder and Finucane’s partner in life, playwright Jackie Smith, who grew up in Woomera in South Australia. She remembers a theatre troupe visiting and conducting workshops when she was a child – an experience that changed her life.

It’s a story she sometimes tells the group’s performers. “Somewhere out there in that audience somewhere, there’s a little Jackie,” she says. “And you don’t know she’s there, but she’s there.”

Finucane & Smith take great pride in touring country Australia. “Our mission when we get to them is to love bomb them,” says Finucane. “Every time we go into a country town, every single time, people say ‘our town has never come together like that’.”

According to its co-creators, the latest show features “pub rock queens and Bollywood love gods, torch singers and clothes flingers, First Nations genius, eye-bursting burlesque, toe tapping and swinging from the rafters”.

That swinging is literal in the case of Kathryn Niesche, perhaps better known for her stage persona, Monkey. “The aerial act that Monkey will be performing is a version of an act that I haven’t performed in over 25 years,” Niesche says. “It’s just so thrilling. I never in my wildest dreams, thought ... at 66 that I’d be doing aerials.”

Longterm F&S performer Mama Alto will sing while Monkey is on the trapeze, having recently returned from performing in Taylor Mac’s Bark of Millions in the UK. She was also part of Alan Cumming’s line-up for Club Cumming in Adelaide in 2021.

“All my life I’d been told no: you stick out too much, you’re too unrealistic, and who is your market demographic, and who’s going to buy tickets?” says Mama.

“Moira and Jackie come along and scoop people up into this fantastic carnival, this phantasmagoria, this world where anything’s possible that shows what the world could – and should – be like.