References

• Combo Fiasco 10th Anniversary Concert Combo Fiasco celebrated their first decade in triumphant style, augmenting their sound in the second half with eight members of the brassy Australian Show Band.
• It has been a complete fiasco It has been a complete fiasco July 11 2003 Cabaret act Combo Fiasco is celebrating a decade together tonight, writes Fiona Scott-Norman. Ten years is a long time, whether you're measuring a marriage, economic sanctions, or a stint in a Bangkok jail. In show business, which is particularly volatile, it's a genuine achievement for a creative partnership to thrive for a decade. Combo Fiasco, arguably Melbourne's most respected cabaret act and renowned for harmonies so tight you could go to sea in them, turned 10 this year, and are justifiably celebrating with an enormous anniversary anniversary performance at the Athenaeum Theatre tonight. "This is a big night for us, people are flying in from all around Australia," says Shaun Murphy, who co-founded Combo with Tony McGill and now ex-member Sharon Millerchip in 1993. "We're very excited because we're a Melbourne-based group, and to date most of our career highlights have happened elsewhere." Indeed. This trio (Charmaine Clements took over from Millerchip in 1999) have performed three lauded seasons in New York, trail-blazing the way for other Australian acts in the cabaret mecca that is the Big Apple. They also co-devised and performed The Blue Angel Cabaret with the Queensland Ballet Company, and last year performed a huge concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Sydney Gay Games. This is all beside two seasons at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and a mountain of corporate gigs. Tonight's show at The Athenaeum is a retrospective for the act, which formed when McGill, Murphy and Millerchip were performing together on Phantom of The Opera. Television was awash with variety shows, and Combo set out to service everyone from Bert and Kerri-Anne through to Daryl and Frankie J. The death of television variety is only one change that McGill has noticed over the past 10 years. "I realised that on Friday night there isn't one commercial musical on anywhere in Melbourne. Ten years ago Melbourne was full of audiences flocking to musicals; Phantom, 42nd Street, Aspects of Love. The landscape of cabaret has changed completely. The Maj (Her Majesty's Theatre) will be dark all year, but we've got intimate venues like Chapel Off Chapel now, which is such a luxury. There's nothing like it anywhere else in Australia." Unsurprisingly, Combo Fiasco themselves have also transformed over the past decade. Audiences impressed with the trio's high-spirited musical arrangements and commitment to excellence may not realise just how much they've relaxed. "It takes a long time to untrain yourself," says Murphy, who spent years training in opera, finally achieving his ambition to be a principal singer, and realising that was not what he wanted. "When Combo started it was all show tunes and tits and teeth. Now we have social commentary, and some original songs. It was an amazing revelation to realise when you're working for yourself you can go entirely off script." This kicking against the training is common to all three members. Clements spent two years at the Australian Ballet School before deciding to study music at WAAPA instead. McGill trained classically as a pianist and musician with the Queensland Conservatorium, and notes with wonder that not once during his training did anyone mention the importance of the lyric. "A whole world opened up to me when someone suggested I read a song like a piece of prose. To do cabaret is so freeing; most people in music theatre really don't feel the need to express themselves creatively. We're very lucky." Combo Fiasco will be expressing themselves with bells on tonight. The show's first half is drawn from a decade of repertoire, the second is Combo backed by the high camp brass magic of the Australian Show Band. The performance will be recorded by Radio National, and doubles as a launch for Combo's latest live CD, Illegal Harmonies. The three are touring regional Australia early next year - "Darwin in February! We're going to melt," says Murphy - and their next project is a CD and concert of Australian music.