KILLER COOKS

We’ve been told that a woman’s place is in the kitchen – but maybe it’s because that’s where the knives are.

Clare McCallum’s new one-woman cabaret Killer Cooks takes a look at some of history’s more bloodthirsty femme fatales. The ones that didn’t just want to kill people, they wanted to bathe in their blood and serve them up with potatoes too.

“The Countess Elizabeth Bathory killed hundreds of young women and bathed in their blood thinking it would keep her youthful… I’d have just gone for Nivea,” says McCallum, whose recent role as Mrs Lovett inspired her to research non-fictional killer cooks like Katherine Knight – the only Australian woman ever to be sentenced to life imprisonment after stabbing her husband 38 times, skinning him, then cooking up parts of his body and serving them up with vegetables.

McCallum will be playing a range of historical not-so-domestic goddesses and performing her own versions of classic songs like Psycho Killer, Folsom Prison Blues, I Can Cook Too, Formidable Marinade, Wait (from Sweeney Todd), Florence & The Machine’s Girl With One Eye as well as a few originals. (AS)

Sep 18, Slide Lounge, 41 Oxford St, Darlinghurst, $20-50+bf, (02) 8915 1899, slide.com.au

BY ANITA SENARATNA