★★★★ from The List

Aussie troubadours paying home visits

‘Hello! It’s the Lounge Room Confabulators.’ A voice chimes cheerily through the intercom. The Confabulators – a pair of bearded Australians in Del Monte suits who will be performing an hour-long storytelling show in my home – ascend the stairwell playing music from a battered radio. Once arrived in my living room they produce a guitar, a ukelele and a selection of budget puppets (mostly Lego figures) before a crowd of a dozen friends who sit wide-eyed and expectant like kids in front of a Saturday morning TV show.

There are songs, which are sad and beautiful; sexy moments, including a disturbing sequence in a morgue; and a series of gory tales centring around a desperate woman taking occult measures to save her husband from ‘goat cancer’. It’s a packed programme that becomes a little hard to follow. But it’s very funny in parts, and touchingly melancholy in others.

It’s the Confabulators’ use of context that makes this magical. Their show is dark, like an adult fairytale. And like all the best fairytales, it begins in the place you thought safest, showing that the familiar can also be scary and wonderful – full of hope, and also full of sorrow.

Your Lounge, Where You Live, 0844 545 8252, until 29 Aug, 6pm & 9pm, £12–£14 per person (minimum 10 person booking).


Written by: Jonny Ensall