By Helen Musa

The Canberra Cabaret Festival is back for three nights, bringing together three distinctive voices for a celebration of music, storytelling and lived experience at the ACT Hub in Kingston.

Leading the program on Thursday and Friday is Deborah O’Toole with Matters of the Heart: A Show About Love, and it comes with a cliché-free guarantee.

A seasoned vocalist with more than 30 years’ experience across music theatre, film, television, corporate bands and the Australian Army Band, O’Toole’s career has taken her around the world – from the Edinburgh Tattoo and the Swiss Tattoo in Basel to performances for troops in the Middle East, the Gallipoli dawn service and singing the national anthem at the MCG.

Her stage credits include the 10th Anniversary production of Les Misérables, along with roles in community favourites such as Come From Away, Mamma Mia!, Shrek, Guys and Dolls and Into the Woods. Yet despite this résumé, O’Toole continues to reinvent herself.

When we speak, she is knee-deep in air dry clay, preparing to launch a new creative venture in Canberra. Her soon-to-open studio, The Joyful Creative, is designed as a kind of “gym for creativity,” a welcoming space where people can experiment with ideas and explore ceramics without needing formal qualifications. With a diploma in textiles and design from RMIT and a lifelong commitment to learning, O’Toole has been immersing herself in the technicalities of  air dry clay, even researching how climate affects ceramics.

After previous postings took her family interstate, (she’s an army reservist now while her husband still serves full-time in the Army) they returned to Canberra about a year ago from Brisbane and are now settling in for good.

When last living here, she was involved with Free Rain Theatre’s production of Priscilla, before covid then a posting to Brisbane cut that chapter short.

Her cabaret, Matters of the Heart, performed here with Caleb Campbell at  the keyboard, marks her second self-devised show, and was devised in Brisbane. Where her first outing was autobiographical, this performance explores love in its many forms.

“There’s a cliché-free guarantee,” she says. “I’ll be talking about the confronting aspects of love, tough love and love for the things we can’t live can’t live without.”

Adding a contemporary a twist, O’Toole will create large digital drawings live on stage as she sings, blending visual art with a set list that ranges widely, from Everything Changes, a song in the musical Waitress and Taylor Swift’s Peace to Billy Joel’s Lullabye and the show-stopper, What the World Needs Now Is Love.

Also featured in the festival line-up is DNA: The Cabaret, Janie Lawson accompanied by Callum Tolhurst-Close, telling the story of discovering a new family later in life.

Rounding out the program is Dave Collins with Dave 101: An Introduction to Poor Life Choices, a self-aware cabaret that mines missteps and hindsight for humour.

Canberra Cabaret Festival, ACT Hub, Kingston, February 19-21.