Show reviewed: 24/02/26

Show rating: Such an easy A, 4.5 stars.

Maybelline is in her Slut Era is a cabaret experience that proves revenge is a dish served cold hearted, lark throated and at a really large Fringe Festival. Maybelline San Juan is a bold, brash and bright young thing that has embraced her “slut era” of her twenties-thirties year old life revolving on the planet and the show is a journey about the carousel of revolving men she dubs her “roster” of sexual partners.

It was definitely a calculated risk to include these men in her show with thinly veiled identities but she holds no bars when it comes to being honest but her own agency in making the decisions around her choice of partners. I have chosen to embrace my strumpet era as unapologetically as Maybelline chooses the word for slut for her own musical sexcapades. The bustling audience had a great time watching a very smutty presentation of Maybelline’s f**kable stats and was very responsive to her effervescent personality and her charismatic stage presence.

Maybelline has explored a cultural phenomenon of women enjoying sex but also one that leaves them vulnerable to falling in love hard and fast as a result of female promiscuity. Her cutting observations are witty, funny and acutely relevant in the loneliness epidemic (that in my opinion is not limited to men.) I have my own experiences with a generation of flakey J named festival liaisons (you know who you are, Mr Cruel Summer, Fringe 2025…) and how that situationships are leaving people confused & unfulfilled.

I think that it’s all about redefining relationships for contemporary times and part of that is changing the way women approach decisions around sex, consent, safety and what is acceptable behaviour in a partnership. There seems to be a complete disconnect from what men expect from women who are engaging them freely of their own sexual agendas and traditional ideas of romantic relationships that women are still encultrated to desire.

In my strumpet era, I think that you can’t expect men to respect that your business to be your own choices without a say in your bedmates but also want chivalry from a man you met on an app. It’s a contradiction in terms, wanting that emotional investment but treating men as objects of detachment but also overcompensating in the hope they will love you back (AKA how I ended up producing a fringe show and taking up burlesque in 2026 for Mr Cruel Summer!)

Frankly, this fringe I’m getting the impression that everyone seems to be unhappy with the status quo.

One of my favourite parts of the show was the “fan art” created by Maybelline making a Swiftie collage of quotes from the mysterious Melbourne comedian (who invited Maybelline to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and then stranded her after a night train between capitals cities, Dude!) I may have been of a similar dramatic bent after being abandoned and created an entire anthology of girl pop themed poetry that I publicly published to Facebook over 2025. Such a highly relatable ways of feminine resistance to the way patriarchy is breaking hearts of folks alike.