Breaking up is hard to do – especially when your fiancé dumps you just six weeks before your wedding. But as Joanne Hartstone has discovered, it also provides excellent material for a cabaret show.
In The Smart Girl’s Guide to Breaking Up, directed by Erin Fowler, Hartstone joins with friends and fellow artists Annie Slade and Jess Beck and a four-piece band to deliver sage advice based around a five-step process and three-part harmonies that span songs by musicians ranging from Etta James to Florence + the Machine.
Dressed in matching black sequinned dresses, the trio begin by stressing that the guide is, in fact, gender-neutral — “anyone can be a smart girl” — before bemoaning how the fairytale happy-ever-after myth leads to romantic ideals that are so frequently thwarted by reality.
Each has their own break-up tale to share during the show, but it is Hartstone’s ill-fated wedding that forms the centrepiece. As she spills the tea over a literal cup of tea, the other two garner loud laughs from the audience by waving red flags behind her back. A proposal under the Eiffel Town in the City of Love when the landmark was closed due to a workers’ strike? Not the best of omens.
At least this show, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s 2025 Frank Ford Commission, gives Hartstone an opportunity to step into the wedding gown she never got to wear when her fiancé suddenly called off the impending nuptials two years later. The soundtrack to her story is a heartfelt rendition of the Etta James’ ballad ‘All I Could do Was Cry’ — which is fitting, given that crying is the first step in The Smart Girl’s Guide to Breaking Up.
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The music, led by musical director and keyboard player Jessica Bigg, is a highlight throughout the production, with Florence + the Machine’s ‘Shake it Out’, Johnny Cash’s ‘Get Rhythm’, Bruno Mars’ ‘Count on Me’ and Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘Unwritten’ among the other songs sampled as the next four steps in the guide are unveiled: Dominate Space, Priorities (“get busy”), Friends, and Flirting.
The three singers harmonise beautifully, and the obvious genuine friendship they share is the ballast for the performance, which ranges over the emotional roller-coaster and grief associated with breaking up, and the things one should definitely not do (call an ex-partner at 2am) as well as those you should. At times there is excessive exposition and the self-help narrative begins to wear a little thin, but it takes courage to share accounts of personal heartbreak, and the advice — even if familiar — is sound.
Many Adelaideans will be familiar with Hartstone from her award-winning solo Fringe shows The Girl Who Jumped Off the Hollywood Sign and That Daring Australian Girl, as well as her work as a highly respected producer and curator, so we know that getting busy and prioritising herself and her career worked for this smart girl. And while she is single these days, she gives a comical demonstration of how she’s mastered the art of fornicating with her eyes.
The Smart Girl’s Guide to Breaking Up ends on an upbeat vibe after Hartstone, Slade and Beck join in a performance of the theme song from The Golden Girls, followed by ‘Count on Me’ and the chorus of American rock band Portugal. The Man’s ‘Feel it Still’. These “rebels” have found their voices post-break-up and learned that “the real happily ever after is the one that you make for yourself on your own terms”.
The Smart Girl’s Guide to Breaking Up was presented at the Space Theatre as part of the 2025 Adelaide Cabaret Festival