Review: JOANNE HARTSTONE - THE SMART GIRL’S GUIDE TO BREAKING UP – ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL 2025 at Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 14th June 2025.

Joanne Hartstone wasn’t quite left standing at the altar. Her long-time partner jilted her a mere six weeks before the wedding. Her friends, and co-performers, Annie Slade and Jess Beck, are also single again. Slade is divorced, and Beck, well, she really must get around to doing that divorce paperwork.

We are all, I am sure, familiar with the five stages of grieving, but Hartstone needed more, so she came up with her own five-step programme to deal with the end of a relationship, and turned it into an hilarious cabaret show. Each of the three tells their story, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, making a couple of costume changes, and interlacing the narratives with occasional bursts of song, beginning with Neil Sedaka’s, Breaking Up is Hard to Do., showing their skill at three-part harmony, four if you count their musical director, Jessica Bigg, singing behind the keyboard in the shadow to the right of the stage with the other musicians.

Hartstone recalls the rather unconventional proposal beneath the Eiffel Tower, their time together, and the build-up to the big day, the warning signs, and where it all went wrong. At least this show gave her a chance to wear the actual wedding dress and sing the Etta James song, All I Could Do Was Cry. Step One: Cry.

Beck then recalled her thirteen-year relationship, and how it ended. The songs were drawn from diverse sources, with hers being Shake it Out from Florence and the Machine. She threw him out and changed everything. Step Two: Dominate the Space.

More stories, more laughs, more songs, and the other steps followed, but you’ll need tickets for the Sunday performance to learn more, that’s if there are still tickets left. The Space for the first performance was filled with people crammed around the tables, sitting on those awfully uncomfortable bentwood chairs. No doubt bookings are strong for the second performance.

The lighting, it must be said, occasionally left a performer in shadow, and I could really have done without being blinded by spotlights being pointed out into the audience. Why do lighting designers still do that? It’s a mystery.

Technical quibbles aside, this annual Frank Ford Commission was a worthy recipient of that award and, for those who miss it this time around, it deserves repeating at a later date.