Excuse Me, Rob Mills Is Doing A Cabaret Show In An Old Kings Cross Brothel This Week

Brought to you by Art & About and the City of Sydney.

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With the lockout laws casting a long and persisting shadow over the once-buzzing entertainment strip and the iconic Coca-Cola sign being literally torn up and sold, this seems about as good a time as any to dive into some nostalgia around Kings Cross. Good news: Art & About Sydney is obliging with a new performance staged in an old Cross institution. Bad news: despite the fact it would make a very good show, it’s not about your favourite kebab shop that always vaguely smelled of vomit.

Hidden Sydney: The Glittering Mile is a “cabaret experience” set over four floors of The Nevada (now The World Bar) — a famed brothel that boasted “the biggest bed in the world”. During the 75-minute performance, the building is packed with fictionalised versions of real people from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Here, you can hang out with noted local eccentric Bea Miles (played by Virginia Gay), property developer and “charismatic crook” Abe Saffron, and Rosaleen Norton who was better known as Roie the Witch — a local bohemian woman who was celebrated for both her art and her “sex magic”.

It was definitely a different time.

For younger punters, one of the most exciting parts of the show may be another character (or more accurately, another actor). The role of fictional nightclub signer Buddy Cole Jr will be played by Australian Idol star-turned-Aussie musical theatre mainstay Rob Mills.

We are all personally invited to swan around Millsy while he pretends to be a suave old crooner and oh god, the 13-year-old version of myself is shrieking. If you grew up in Australia in the early-2000s and are even slightly attracted to men, I’m pretty sure you have a civic duty to go see this thing.

Hidden Sydney: The Glittering Mile is one of many weird and wonderful things popping up all over the city right now. Art & About Sydney is a year-long program of public art projects which also currently includes an outdoor gallery about Australian life in Hyde Park, a big Keith Haring-style mural behind Customs House, and a herd of 60 giant horses which are set to storm through the city in “soundsuits” and scare the shit out of you on Pitt Street Mall on your way home from work.

Of course, that can’t compete with the pure Australian art that is Rob ‘Millsy’ Mills, but it’s still pretty good.

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Hidden Sydney runs from now until October 9 at The Nevada (now The World Bar). Tickets are $35 + bf and you can check out the full performance listings here.

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Brought to you by Art & About and the City of Sydney.