Her Story of the Blues
Holden St Theatres
Sun 22 Mar, 2026

Most blues enthusiasts would be familiar with names like Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters – names of men who played a crucial role in the development of the blues. They may not be so familiar with names like Bessie Smith, Willie Mae Thornton or Ma Rainey. In comparison these names of early female exponents of the blues have been largely forgotten. Bessie Smith was known as the Empress of the Blues, and Ma Rainey as the Mother of the Blues. These monikers suggest they were certainly respected at the time as prime contributors to this expanding genre.

It is the story of these women that Marie Therese (MT) tells in Her Story of the Blues, not just because it’s important to acknowledge how good these women were, but to also make sure that their stories don’t get forgotten in the predominantly male historical perspective on what was going on with the blues in the 1920s and 30s in the US.

Marie Therese chooses to play most of the songs on dobro. She plays it well, and dobros have a comparatively exotic appearance compared to a standard acoustic guitar and allow her to feature the occasional slide guitar interlude – a common feature of much blues music. A few songs are also played on electric piano. I preferred these – they felt stronger and more definite. They also made clearer the connection between blues and jazz.

Changing costumes to fit in with the mood and personality of each performer was really effective, and gave the show that little extra panache that cabaret brings to live performance. Spoken intros with background info about each performer were delivered against innovative musical backdrops. However, this rendered much of the spoken text difficult to hear. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the accompanying text on the projected slides was too small to read comfortably.

This performance came with bonus entertainment from an Auslan interpreter who not only translated the spoken narratives, but the lyrics of the songs, and even attempted to convey the mood of instrumental pieces with signing and dancing. Really quite amazing but it did feel like a distraction at times and I wondered if it threw MT off her normal routine a bit as she occasionally seemed a little uncertain about how to proceed.

A really enjoyable show. MT is an accomplished and engaging performer with an important story to tell. A little more attention to some of the technical issues might have made it more inclusive.