Glamping - with Bobby and the Pins

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Thu 03 Jul 2014 - Sun 06 Jul 2014

Bobby and the Pins are a super-cute, cheeky and talented barbershop quartet, with their feet firmly planted in the '50s. They're one of Australia's only female barbershop quartets and certainly the only one dedicated to the 50s.

They're bringing their brand of harmonies, humour and a little bit of ribaldry in a brand-new, full length cabaret show, Glamping, to the Butterfly Club as part of its In The Wings Festival (a fringe to the Melbourne Cabaret Festival). In the show, the four delightful dames invent "glamping" and things are destined to run amok.

The quartet is comprised of the four Bobbys – Bobby Rae (the self assured, resident style queen of the outfit), Bobby Blue (a recent widower, who consoles herself with gin and horse riding), Bobby Bullet (the mildly eccentric, returned service woman) and Bobby Dazzler (an English teacher by day and dedicated cat lady).

Bobby Rae, one of the formative members, explains that she has always been drawn to the '50s. "Well, it's so glamorous, isn't it," she exclaims. "It's the fashion and the effort that both men and women went to. It's a lot of work – what with pin curls, winged eye-liner, fiddling with garter belts. When you get it right though, it's so satisfying. I love pearls, waisted dresses and petticoats, and of course, the music – it's so beautiful."

Bobby Rae was always destined to sing. "I come from a very musical family," she laughs. "We used to sing on car-trips. Someone would take the third above or below. It was only later that I found out that it was kind of unusual! Music's always been part of my life. I used to play guitar. I still play piano and more recently I've taken up the ukulele. Singing is my passion though – you can take it anywhere!"

The quartet evolved through a happy coincidence. "It was Bobby Bullet's vision to start a female barbershop quartet. Bobby Bullet mentioned it to her choirmaster, who happens to be my husband! He said " 'well, my wife's a singer. We should get together and sing some stuff', and then we found Bobby Blue and Bobby Dazzler".

The rest is history. Since then, their shows have been pretty damn illustrious – they've even performed before Dita Von Teese in the Spiegeltent. "Yeah, that was really wonderful," Bobby Rae notes modestly. "We were in the Spiegeltent, which is so amazing anyway of course, and it was like 'whoa' – there she was watching."

The new show sounds like a hoot and the ladies are beside themselves with excitement about it. "We're very passionate about this project," Bobby Rae emphasises. "I'm actually in the process of making a surprise prop for the show right now. I won't tell you what it is, but I'm becoming a sewer! The idea for this show came out of a brainstorming session that we had this time last year. We wanted to get into modern language, but from a '50's perspective and that's where we hit upon 'glamping'. Glamorous camping – it's perfect. It's that concept of having all of the home comforts in a tent, TV etc, and not really touching nature. It's a bit kooky isn't it? These days you can go camping and have wifi."

"So, we've got four ladies in the 1950s out in the wilderness for an interesting reason, which will be revealed. As you can imagine, there are toilet dilemmas and getting lost – all of those fun things … and there are great songs, a few with some lyric changes, some original arrangements and some old classics. Of course, back in the '50s, glamping would have been more rudimentary – no TV for a start!"

#cabaret
#humour
#city
#music
#july
!date 03/07/2014 -- 06/07/2014
%wnmelbourne