This  was a clever, entertaining show. The appeal mostly lay in the impish, free-wheeling tone that Kruck establishes for his debut cabaret.

The cute premise is that Kruck has been seeing a stroppy, Germanic lady shrink who tells him that  to get out of his  funk created by a very nasty break-up he needs to learn to be able to express himself much more freely. She has the perfect solution for him. He  needs to become a performer…He should  come up with and perform his own cabaret show.

This is why we have Kruck in the persona of nervous nellie Lionel coming onto the stage, barely able to string a few words together, and  clutching a tiny piece of paper, a tiny pen and with a song list to cross off.

The hour long show continues predictably enough and by journey’s end Lionel has truly come out of his shell and wows the audience with a big show closing number, ‘This Is Me’, in  which he does take his shirt off.

The show’s clever conceit remains in tack to the very end with Kruck’s encore number simply entitled, ‘I Wish Had An  Encore Number’!

An impressive aspect of this show was that all the songs, which stood up well, were original, penned by Kruck himself, and composed by Chris Perrin. On the night he was accompanied by a live band featuring piano, percussion  and double bass.

With this show Dash Kruck flags not only that he is  a talented performer but that he also has plenty of smarts. A regular on Queensland stages, his state of origin, its great to see him  expanding his horizons.

Recommended, I MIGHT TAKE MY SHIRT OFF will play two further Sunday nights, as part of the Hayes’ Month of Sundays program. You can catch him on Sunday 27th September and Sunday 11th October. Both nights are a 7pm start.