When her much-loved brother died, this artist responded with a cabaret show

You might assume Geraldine Quinn – the Green Room Award-winning cabaret star known for her sharp wit and powerhouse voice – would be the golden child of her family.

But, she says, her late brother Nick was always the shining light. “Everybody was closest to him. He was everybody’s favourite.”

Nick, a gregarious character and talented performer in his own right, died from brain cancer in 2019. Quinn pays tribute to her sibling in The Passion of Saint Nicholas, using stories and songs to tell the hilarious and often heartbreaking story of their relationship, from early ventures on stage together (including a memorable performance at the 1991 Dandenong Talent Quest) to their divergent career paths, with Geraldine forging a career in the arts and Nick pursuing a more traditional nine-to-five.

The Passion of Saint Nicholas traces the ups and downs of the siblings’ creative ventures.Credit:

The Passion of Saint Nicholas traces the ups and downs of Geraldine and Nick’s creative ventures and their occasional rivalry. It includes shifting “rankings” of Quinn’s six siblings and a squabble over who had the bigger head. There’s gallows humour aplenty (not least a song lamenting that Nick didn’t die of a funnier ailment) but also a clear-eyed look at a wrenching loss.

It took Quinn some time to get to a point where she could celebrate her brother’s life on stage. She originally wanted to write the show directly after Broad, nominated for Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2022, but colleagues talked her out of it.

“I spoke to a great director who I was thinking about working with, and she just looked at me and went, ‘I don’t think you’re ready to do this yet; I think you need to talk to someone’.

“I was worried any fury at the world I had (would) come up in the writing. The last thing you want is to have some rage-fuelled cabaret, where everyone goes, ‘Well, I think she’s not fine.’ ”

Eventually, she started working on the project with writer/producer Declan Fay as director. She sensed Fay’s similar cultural background (both grew up in “furiously loud Irish Catholic families”) would allow him to connect with the story.

Melbourne’s lengthy lockdowns scuppered a return to the stage for some time, and then, earlier this year, her father became seriously ill, and her mental health declined. She pays tribute to Support Act, an organisation that delivers crisis relief services to musicians, for helping her get the help she needed.

Just as the show was about to open at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in April, her father died. An already emotionally charged run of shows became even more poignant, as family who were in town for the funeral, including some who had never seen Quinn perform, came to watch.

‘It was one of the most insane experiences of my life, but it was also incredibly precious.’

Geraldine Quinn

“It was one of the most insane experiences of my life, but it was also incredibly precious,” Quinn says.

“It was the best and worst show to do at that time. Imagine if I was doing some silly subject matter; it would seem so trivial in comparison to trauma. It gave me a little time capsule to get my brother back for an hour and a thing to focus on. It didn’t feel like I had to push all of that stuff with Dad to one side.”

Now, with more water under the bridge, and Quinn looking ahead to her Sydney run, she’s proud of the show’s optimistic core, how it suggests we can find our way through seemingly insurmountable grief and still find a way to celebrate the past.

“That first director was right; I needed to find myself a little bit further down the path of that grief than when I first had the idea. That allowed me to write from a better place, to be vulnerable, but also to be a bridge.”

After a stretch in her career where she no longer enjoyed writing shows, Quinn has found embracing levity, even in the shadows of sadness, is vital.

“There’s no shame in crying, feeling wounded or hurt, because you carry that with you all the time. But I so wanted to have fun on stage, and I feel like I achieved that.”

The Passion of Saint Nicholas, Hayes Theatre, October 4 to 6.

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