A Response: Dangerous Goods

A response to Dangerous Goods, the centrepiece of the second week of the Auckland Live Cabaret Festival, and potentially the highlight of the whole festival.

Cabaret can be so much fun that it’s easy to forget that it’s also a political tool. It’s inherently subversive, breaking down the wall between art and audience, between forms, and between ideas. It’s fun, of course, there should be dancing at the revolution, and it is a display and showcase of sheer dedication to craft, but that fun and that craft should never come at the expense of having actual ideas about the world.

Dangerous Goods, from Australian collective Polytoxic, is cabaret at its absolute best. Across a fleet hour, the collective skewers the audience’s expectations of the show, the form, and the world’s ideas. From the jump, the cast are queering the stage, as they stomp onstage in that supposedly hetero of all outfits: construction worker garb. After a quick opening number to get the energy up, the acts unfold.

While there’s no single MC or host of the show, Kalala Sione takes centre stage with her vocals early on, while co-creator Lisa Fa’alafi brings the energetic highlight of the entire show with an anti-colonisation screed (and I say screed with the highest of compliments). The show’s other co-creator, Leah Shelton, has an especially stirring act that takes aim at ridiculous expectations of women’s bodies, ending with a triumphant metaphorical stake in the ground.

Elsewhere in the show, Mayu Moto does a winning aerial riff on Red Riding Hood, there is an incredible plate-breaking routine from a performer whose name I didn’t catch (apologies) and a brilliant take on Twin Peaks – or perhaps a take on any of the bleak number of pop culture ephemera that include naked dead women wrapped in plastic. It’s a lot of show packed into an hour, but there’s two aspects of Dangerous Gods in particular that put it a notch above the rest, and make it one of the best experiences I’ve had in live theatre all year.

Firstly, is the curation. Despite the wide array of skills on display, everything feels like part of a whole. It’s queer, it’s colourful (in more than one sense of the word), and it’s undeniably femme. Often, shows with many acts can feel like just that, the sum of many disparate parts. Worse, they can add up to less than those parts, with each individual act, though impressive under their own steam, rubbing up against the others in ways that only diminish, they do not build. 

Dangerous Goods never feels that way. For as bold and diverse as the acts are, the curation feels extremely careful and thought through. It may seem strange to praise careful thought when I’m praising a show that encourages/requires the front row to wear a safety visor, but it genuinely places Dangerous Goods above so many other shows in this category; each act builds to a kaleidoscopic array of lens on the show’s take on identity, and the importance of defying the norm, as well as recognising that defiance.

The other thing that puts Dangerous Goods a cut above is that it actually feels dangerous. It comes at that word from a few directions. Firstly, the performers actually feel like they’re at risk – not because of any lack of skill or craft on their parts – but because of how far they’re willing to go for each act. Secondly, the acts are actually engaging with ideas that feel dangerous (which is a special blessing when many line-up shows barely engage with the sniffing of a concept, let alone ideas). In 2026, it shouldn’t be as much of a breath of fresh air as it is to see a show that celebrates defiance, celebrates diversity, celebrates the breadth of our world rather than the limits of it. 

Dangerous Goods feels like what cabaret should be. It’s not people hitting the same notes on songs that we all know. It’s not people reanimating lifeless ideas. It’s risky, edgy, subversive, and genuinely fun. And my favourite bit? Like life, it's best experienced from the front row.

The Auckland Cabaret Festival runs until July 5 at the Civic Theatre.

This response was commissioned by Auckland Live. You can find more information about this commissioning structure here.