DISENCHANTED

Writer/Performer: Eliane Morel
Musical Director and Accompanist: Daryl Wallis

Winner of BEST IN FRINGE (Newcastle Fringe Festival) BEST SHOW (Dubbo Fringe) and BEST 18+ SHOW (Young-Howze Theatre Awards), and nominated for BEST CABARET (Melbourne Fringe), Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales, is a deeply subversive take on fairy tales. Sexy, political and ‘heartbreakingly real’, this show is definitely not for children. Described as a “raunchy, operatic Into the Woods”, Disenchanted is set in a Parisian Salon in 1699 and hosted by the vivacious Madame d’Aulnoy (a real-life historical character, with a splash of artistic licence thrown in) and features a host of disgruntled fairy tale characters, keen to tell their side of the story, and answer these questions and more: Why was the Wolf in Grandma’s bed? How does a golden-egg-laying goose find liberation? Are the Ugly sisters’ feet really that big? And what does this all have to do with the French Revolution?

Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales began its life at a dinner party organised by my niece, who at the time was 9 years old. She invited us to attend dressed as fairy tale characters, and sing a song or tell a story as that character. In what seemed like a magically short space of time, I wrote the song from the point of view of Olga, one of Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters. From there an idea germinated of creating a cabaret based on the stories of fairytale side characters whose stories are overlooked and who feel they’ve been misrepresented.

After a few songs had been written, I was looking for a frame for the cabaret and discovered something marvellous – the real-life ‘Godmother of Fairy Tales’ – Madame d’Aulnoy – the hostess of a salon in 17th Century Paris who coined the term ‘fairy tales’ (contes de fees, in French). So, that’s where Disenchanted is set – in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Salon.

Disenchanted debuted at the Sydney Fringe Festival in 2018, then toured the Far South Coast of NSW in 2019. Our tours were cancelled in 2020 but we created an online version, and thanks to our incredibly talented team (Daryl Wallis, Simon Dikkenberg, Hayden Rodgers, Merran Hughes and Mimi Worssam) this digital rendition of ‘Disenchanted for the Melbourne Fringe was nominated for Best Cabaret, won Best 18+ Show in the International Young-Howze Theatre Awards, and has been viewed by people all over the world (Adelaide FringeView, Melbourne Fringe, Denver Fringe, Dunedin Fringe)

In 2021 we went touring and won more awards – we were so honoured to be awarded with the prize for BEST IN FESTIVAL at the Newcastle Fringe and BEST SHOW at the Dubbo Fringe Festival.

Since then we’ve performed at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Brisbane Fringe Festival, Canberra Street Theatre, Avalon Restaurant Katoomba, Bathurst Keystone Theatre, Robbie Burns Hotel and we’ll be performing a new show, Disenchanted Returns with new characters and new songs, at the Newcastle Fringe, in the Royal Exchange Theatre.

Saturday 29 March at 7.30pm

Sunday 30 March at 3.00pm

Book Tickets Here

If you’d like to see a digital version of Disenchanted, it’s now available FOR FREE on YouTube. Follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9E6_WxCbvM