Words, Wine and Song provides a smorgasbord of musical and poetic improvisation, with a constant rotation of characters chopping and changing from the audience and seeking inspiration from a sea of oddly worded Post It notes. MC Cordy Black keeps the show running smoothly as she pulls performers from the audience like clowns from a mini. 

Cas Wanden and Emma Wollum open the night, each with songs adapted from writings they had found around the BATS premises. Cas, on her guitar, strums out a poem entitled ‘Galaxy’ where she deals with the all too familiar themes of alienation and the stupidity of the human race while Emma, on her accordion, follows it up with a lively ditty entitled ‘Proletariat Unite Saucily.’ They are then both sent to devise new songs, inspired by the phrases written on the Post It notes littering the floor.

Immediately after a Mr Matt Powell is plucked from the audience and questions the audience about love. With a predominantly cynical response, he manages to seek out one woman who is in love. For her it’s about a sense of humour and the butt, and with that Matt vanishes to the audience promising to produce a sonnet built on these pillars of romance.

As soon as Matt disappears, four audience members are invited on stage to create on-the-spot limericks and the shows pace only increases as the four opt to perform their rhymes on grief and space with Irish accents. 

Swiftly moving on from this we are presented with the promise of a quick lesson in Japanese, allowing some of the players to show off their linguistic skills. What this means is an awkwardly acted-out dinner scene, which is then re-enacted and dubbed over in Japanese, eventually leading to a hilariously disorientating Japanese song about food preparation.

But no time to dwell on the madness for its again time to rotate the acts. This time Black calls on former beatnik guitarist Vince Cabrera to give one plucky punter a chance to lay down some spoken word poetry to his beat guitar slapping. Melbourne’s Rik Brown rises to the occasion, channelling his inner Allen Ginsberg with a passionate yet sensitive poem about putting mustard in a girl’s custard, spoken emotionally over Cabrera’s guitar rhythms, which have been honed down to a fine art over the years.  

Adding to the madness, Uther Dean concludes this by surprising us with a ‘found poem’ regarding the pain of not getting his dream job, and before we know it Emma and Cas have returned, songs newly written for our very ears. Emma’s song, entitled ‘I don’t wanna close my eyes in the Volvo of earthly delights’ is an instant hit and her lyrics float to exotic ideas of ‘raw milk, kale, tiny houses and Bernie Sanders.’ 

Cas has also been hard at work, writing the classic, ‘You’re as pretty as a trim flat white takeaway, but I won’t do that.’ Laden with coffee puns, it’s witty and also entertaining as it morphs into another song about Pokemon and her failure to catch Dragonite.

Matt returns with his promised sonnet which is remarkably eloquent for something written in a busy theatre in under thirty minutes and the madness of the night culminates in all of the players jamming out on stage to another Post It note-inspired song.

All in all the show has a fun, playful feel which morphs from one act to the next, showcasing the speed with which these players’ brains work when it comes to writing instant hits or old time favourites. The final scene involving multiple instruments, microphones, a token Darth Vader mask and an audience full of people on their feet, slappin’ each other and clappin’ along to the freshly coined classic ‘Slyly slap dat with a spoon’ stands testament to that.

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