"Wild and Wonderful...Milking the Fest for all It's Worth"'"
The Scotsman on The Dairy Queen
"Highly charged, multifaceted, extraordinary... Finucane's characters are typically defined by a fragile beauty, a power and an elegance bordering on fragmentation and death.'"
Realtime
"Moira Finucane, La Clique's wild and wonderful performer in Der Spiegel,
goes out with a Bang'"
Scotsman on The Queen of Hearts
"Those who have seen performance artist Moira Finucane in action would concur that she is less an actor and more a force of nature - her work is concentrated and intensely controlled, sexually charged and compellingly strange, minutely choreographed and unsettling'"
The Age
"Stunning... At the heart of her extraordinary shows is Finucane's volcanic physical presence and willingness to always go 'too far'.'"
Sydney Morning Herald
"A real treat...drew the audience into a world of soporific music contrasted with violent images. Moira Finucane has created a sinister world ...highly original.'"
Manchester Evening News
"One of the nation's most provocative, original artists.'"
Herald Sun
"The most electrifying stage performer in Australia.'"
Sydney Star Observer
"Is Finucane Australia's first post-modern comic?..highly inventive... a world of twisted logic, irony and dark internal forces.'"
West Australian
The Burlesque Hour locks loads and liberates Burlesque for the 21 st Century in a non-stop panorama of raucous, risqué and razor sharp acts that have brought the house down and created a frenzy amongst critics and audiences from Hong Kong to London , Tokyo to Toowoomba . Led astray by internationally acclaimed Queen of Cabaret Bizarre Moira Finucane, enjoy an impossibly edgy and entertaining program which sees Circus and Burlesque Star Azaria Universe, Japanese Shock Cabaret Artiste Yumi Umiumare, mix it up with Moira in a salubrious salon with a luminous array of special guest artistes.
"On the barometric scale that arcs from feminine to feminist to female, The Burlesque Hour is so far off-the-chart, the needle is pointing to Meteor. The Burlesque Hour is a series of set pieces.by an unholy trinity of fatale feministas: Moira Finucane, beauty queen of the damned; Yumi Umiumare, an Asian tiger in a China doll shop; and Azaria Universe, the perfect blend of form and function. Eye-popping, balloon-popping, cork-popping theatre'"
Herald Sun 2004
"A succession of delights; performed with enormous wit, style, intelligence and originality. It's a knockout!"'"
The Sunday Age 2004
"Powerful performances ... intense...superb...deliciously ambiguous."'"
The Age 2004
"The new showgirl is political and transgressive... a pungent commentary on gender, violence, power and desire..."'"
The Australian 2004
"If you want to see some inspired, adventurous, often hilarious theatre, see this show. the gamut of emotions, the delicious strangeness of it all, I want to go and see it again. And you can say much better than that'"
3D World Sydney 2004
"The Burlesque Hour. a gob smacking highlight of the last 12 months , simple in concept, modern in approach, profoundly complex and breathtakingly beautiful - it showed what talented artists can do.and should be doing.'"
InPress Magazine 2004
"Worthy of a standing ovation, and they got it. The Burlesque hour was easily the most sensational and entertaining show of the year'"
Beat Magazine 2004
"Glitter and pizzazz.nudity, masses of glamour and a certain degree of daring in this wild, unpredictable production which snaps like a whip with a rhinestone handle.'"
Adelaide Advertiser 2004
The Saucy Cantina is award winning Cabaret Bizarre. Inspired by food, and poured over a soundtrack from hell, Finucane serves up nine courses from pie to sauce, from rollmops to marshmallows in a performance that redefines cabaret.
"A knockout...Inspired... Intensely physical and supremely wicked... totally redefines cabaret in this deliriously frenzied show that overflows with images and ideas.'"
Melbourne Times, 2002
"High Octane.. witty... intense...sometimes brutal"'"
South China Morning Post 2004
"Sexy, potent and in-your-face... explosive, irreverent and confronting.'"
The Australian, 2002
"Stunning... an edible explosion of delicious wickedness.'"
Sydney Morning Herald, 2000
"You might very well need to recover in a nice quiet room after Finucane's astonishingly trippy and confronting performance. Simply put, this woman is bent. And very funny. Those of you who have seen Finucane in action will already have a ticket, we're sure. For the rest, we urge you to buy one. This will keep you up for days.'"
Sydney Star Observer, 2000
"If you thought Moira Finucane was too much as The Dairy Queen then you haven't seen anything yet. Her latest show, The Saucy Cantina needs to be experienced to be....experienced. Lyrical, visually evocative writing....never has there been such a glorious match of persona, venue and show.'"
The Melbourne Times, 1999
"Cabaret bizarre' diva Moira Finucane is dishing up her dark ironic mayhem - raucous, rangy and occasionally smooth as velvet'"
The Australian, 2000
"Finucane enjoys a relationship with food that would be illegal if vegetables registered any brain activity. A volcanic stage presence, and each scene is an individual marvel - often arousing to the point of distraction - and genuinely funny at the same time.'"
The Age, 1999
Phantasmagoria is a dark psychic landscape. Mixing elements of Victorian melodrama, with magic surrealism and silent movie heroines, phantasmagoria is the story of a lone woman on a steam train hurtling through the night, pursued by her thirty red haired, yellowed eyed relatives into a nightmare of frozen worlds, murderous roses and a wild star filled sea.
"Spectacular... it's the images both verbal and visual that sustain this
journey, lovely images and fantastic effects that are beautifully integrated
- crazily realistic in a surreal kind of way. Finucane has a fantastic stage
presence ... she is a class act.'"
ABC Radio, 2001
"Astoundingly beautiful...Finucane is a tall powerful figure of galvanising presence... the monologue is stringent and poetic, calling up a host of vivid, shifting worlds.'"
InPress, 2001
"Her motto might well be theatre is not safe. It's never safe for her and its rarely comfortable for her audiences. Her new one woman show is what\Artaud would have called "total theatre"; a hallucinogenic dreamscape.'"
The Herald Sun, 2001
"This is highly concentrated, intriguing, visually haunting theatre...Like a disturbing trip on acid.'"
Sunday Age, 2001
"Phantasmagoria attacks all the senses in a visual bleak, maniacal and totally riveting performance.. we transfixed, unquestioningly believe her... eerie, powerful and indelible.'"
MCV, 2001
From a mere 3 minutes to 15 minutes long, Moira Finucane's short
works - Breathtaking Burlesques and Magnificent Monologues - plunge audiences into an intense imaginative terrain. Text based or entirely physical these works share a minute attention to physical gesture, driving and often obscure soundtracks, and Finucane's trademark fantastical characters with their cracked
physical grace, dark sexuality and humour.
"Strange things happen. How many times have you heard a contemporary dance audience squealing in horror during a performance? They did when towering rippling milk maid Moira Finucane threatened to shower them with two huge cartons of milk during her Dairy Queen ...perverse, obscene, hilarious.'"
The Age on The Dairy Queen 1999
"One of the most visceral expressions of anguish I have ever seen."
Melbourne Times on Sauce 2002
"La Argentina spouted a tale of ludicrous proportions, a rollicking, insane story of life with polar bears, kidnapping and gipsy pirates."
Realtime on Argentina Gina Catalina, 2002
"More than a simple reversal of male to female drag, Finucane's Romeo
negotiated the crossing from female to male and back again."
Realtime on Romeo, 1995
"The extraordinary text carried her performance to somewhere I'm yet to return from."
Realtime on Argentina Gina Catalina, 1995
"This is what I call genderfuck"
Theatre Australasia on Romeo, 1995
"But it's Moira Finucane who steals the show from Romeo, to the psychotic waitress of Expresso, to the icon Argentina Gina Catalina, a red PVC clad dominatrix who tells of trawling the streets with her 12 dogs, looking for meat."
Sydney Morning Herald on cLUB bENT UK tour, 1996
"Camp and stunning technique...Argentina Gina Catalina describes falling from her aerialist mother's breast on to Antarctic icefloes, being suckled by wolves and captured by stinking bandits....joyously brings the house down."
The Australian, 1997
The Dress Shop
Commissioned by Chunky Move Dance Company, the Dress Shop is a
site specific 10 minute event: a gothic horror of Victorian seamstresses, conjuring up with their neat little stitches a monster, whose massive
train engulfs the audience in a spider's web of black lace.
"Sewing through their own flesh, two black garbed seamstresses rouse a somnolent Vampira in a gargantuan black gown who shudders and hallucinates as her lacy black train rises to envelop everyone in the shop"
The Australian, 2001
"Greenaway meets Nosferatu..."
InPress, 2001
"Perpetually fascinating to watch...""
Stage Left, 2001
"Moira Finucane gives a fine performance as a towering spooky hag - a wonderful blend of the wicked fairy Carabosse, Charles Dickens' Miss Haversham, and the cosily creepy Morticia Adams, drawn slowly towards her diminutive seamstresses who diligently stitch and toil to feed their mistresses appetite, pricking and lacerating themselves with needles to shower her in blood...her massive black train expanding outwards to enshroud the audience.""
The Age, 2001
Faith - the tale of a monstrous queen
Set in a magnificent old theatre, Faith tells the gothic fairy story of a heartless queen on the eve of her 400th birthday. The theatre is her deserted palace, the audience her birthday guests, and the giving of a grisly gift tips her broken world into chaos in a story of revenge that unfolds throughout the theatre.
"Finucane is riveting...she seems to glide through the space like a disembodied spirit...she tells the tantalising tale of a childhood locked in a dungeon and made to cry tears of pure crystal"
The Melbourne Times, 2000
"When the curtain rumbles up, we sit like rabbits on the stage while Queen Faith, sweeping around the rows of seats, describes her macabre revenge before driving us out of the theatre.. clever...dangerous...this is indeed an 'event'."
The Age, 2000
