Palais Geelong Morning Melodies returns this week with a special Christmas-themed show featuring Australian cabaret sweethearts Karla Hillam and Jonathan Guthrie-Jones.
Tis the Season: A Very Jazzy Christmas Spectacular follows the success of the Palais’ first Morning Melodies show in September this year, Some Enchanted Evening: the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, which also featured Hillam and Guthrie-Jones.
Guthrie-Jones said Tis the Season was all about celebrating the most wonderful time of the year.
“The beauty of our show is that we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the traditional, but it’s also a lot of fun,” he said.
“It’s a little bit camp, there’s a broad range of songs from very traditional carols, to older popular songs like White Christmas, to Christmas songs that appear in modern movies such as Love Actually and the Grinch.
“It’s fun, and that’s really the point. It’s such a wonderful time of year, and the show is all about putting a smile on everyone’s face.”
The duo have performed extensively together over the past four years, and Guthrie-Jones said he and Hillam had developed a natural chemistry in that time.
“I met Karla about four years back now, and I think since then about 95 percent of the performing I’ve done has been alongside her,” he said.
“We’ve got about five different shows we do together, and to be honest, this is probably our favourite.
“We really enjoy ourselves, and I think our voices blend really well. We’re at the point where we seem to know what the other is going to do; we’re very in sync with each other.”
Guthrie-Jones said the pair’s first costumes of the show – knitted Christmas sweaters – summed up the show.
“I’d suggest no one gets there late because our opening outfits are really quite special,” he said.
“We wear these awful, awful Christmas sweaters. And because of that I think it’s my favourite show.
“When you come out wearing that, you just know you have to enjoy yourself.”
Tis the Season is at Palais Geelong at 10.30am on Thursday, December 1.
