REVIEW: Wine Mum Anthems - Anywhere Festival

Wine Mum Anthems

Created and performed by: Kate Schirmer and Jen Teh

Presented by: Anywhere Festival Brisbane

Venue: The Raven Hotel, Comedy Cellar

Date attended: 3 May, 2026

“Sometimes the long way is more fun.”

Millennials have now reached the age where the songs that once made them feel edgy and alive at 2am in the Valley are now being called “wine mum anthems.” What a humbling notion... It also turns out to be the perfect premise for a new cabaret!

Wine Mum Anthems, created and performed by longtime best friends Kate Schirmer and Jen Teh, is a comedy cabaret for everyone who used to be cool. Or, as the show quickly admits, for everyone who was probably never cool, but did go to a lot of gigs. The show covers classics from the late 1990s and early 2000s, pairing them with stories of misspent youth, share houses, bad employment choices, and a friendship that has survived decades of life changes.

As a 1995 baby, I am slightly younger than the show’s demographic. I wasn’t the person singing ‘No Aphrodisiac’ at 2am in the Valley when it first came out. I was probably at home watching Play School and being told not to eat crayons. But as a singing teacher (like Kate and Jen), I have a crazy mental catalogue of songs from several decades. I may not have personally experienced them at nightclub age, but this show was embarrassingly well-targeted for me.

The title comes from when a Gen Z Triple J presenter reportedly referred to ‘No Aphrodisiac’ by The Whitlams as a “wine mum anthem.” Bro. From that small cultural injury, Kate and Jen build a show about music, ageing, friendship, and the horror of realising your youth now qualifies as archive material. It isn’t a show of original songs. These are songs that already live in people’s bones. They are pre-loaded with memories. The fun came from hearing them rearranged, reframed, and filtered through two women looking back on who they thought they were, who they actually were, and who they became.

The flashback stories are the main structure of the show... Post-choir Regatta piss-ups. A phone hotline interview. Judgy theatre-kid friendship groups made up of girls, gays, and music allies. Kate’s line about her husband being “just enough gay” for her. The stories are messy in a recognisable way. Like a friend handing you a photo from 2002 and saying, “Please ignore my eyebrows.”

A TV monitor adds a neat visual thread. It begins as an empty share house living room and gradually fills as the memories pile up: posters, burned CDs, cassettes, disposable camera photos, Rage playing on the TV. The screen gives the show a scrapbook quality, with each new object adding another piece of their formative years. By the end, we'd been invited into the lounge room of their collective past.

Kate and Jen have an easy rhythm together. As best friends do. Their back and forth has the comfort of people who have known each other for years and still enjoy making each other laugh. No one has to push for rapport. It’s already there in the timing, the glances, the half-finished thoughts, and the way one can supply the facial expression, footnote, or incriminating detail before the other has finished the sentence. I especially loved the detail that they still book theatre tickets together so they are guaranteed to keep seeing each other. That detail says a lot about long friendship, effort, and the way adult life tries to drag people in different directions. Wholesome!

Vocally, both performers have plenty to show off. Kate and Jen are singing teachers and classically trained singers, and the show lets them poke fun at that background while also casually proving the training has not gone anywhere. A short classical throwback from their uni years had that slightly smug “yes, we can still do this” quality, which I respect. Their harmonies are clean, their diction is sharp, and they know how to make a lyric sound like an inside joke. Jen’s Barbra Streisand impression was scarily spot-on, and Kate’s Celine Dion came with the necessary intense eyes. You could practically see the theatre-kid wiring lighting up behind them. They may be older, wiser, and home by 8:15pm, but the drama-school dork never truly leaves the building.

The arrangements give the show most of its musical personality. These are not straight covers plonked between anecdotes. Their nod to the days when they used to arrange songs for their answering machines is such a cute pre-smartphone artefact. Kate and Jen rework the songs with cabaret instincts, adding harmony, comedy, and the occasional emotional ambush. My favourite musical moment came from the mashup of ‘Semi-Charmed Life,’ ‘One Week,’ and ‘I Want You to Want Me,’ accompanied by pianist bestie Simon. He keeps it all moving with the calm focus of a man who has accepted his friends’ crazy choices and prepared accordingly. There was also an altered-lyrics version of ‘Stop’ by the Spice Girls, complete with audience choreography. We all knew the moves. A room full of adults doing Spice Girls chorie in a cellar on a weeknight has real therapeutic value. Science may not have confirmed this yet, but I stand by it.

The Raven Hotel’s Comedy Cellar suited the show well. It was small, warm, and close enough that every joke had somewhere to land. The room was full, and people were laughing from the first few minutes, particularly when the references got local. The Beat, UQ, the Regatta, Valley nights, and Triple J countdowns gave the show a Brisbane stamp instead of a vague “remember the 2000s?” nostalgia package.

Kate is a naturally hilarious storyteller, with excellent timing and a gift for landing a throwaway line. Jen matches her beautifully, often with a slightly different comic style. The contrast between them keeps the show interesting. The spoken sections has the looseness of friends reminiscing, but in this room, that casual quality suits the material. It's like sitting in on a highly entertaining catch-up where the stories have been edited just enough to be stage-worthy, but not so much that they lost their messy relatability. ‘Steer’ by Missy Higgins, performed as a duet, was the clearest example of the show’s softer side. The setlist included music from other Aussie artists like Custard, You Am I, The Whitlams and more, with enough early-2000s references to make me emotionally reach for a Supre top and a Nokia.

Wine Mum Anthems is niche, funny, musically sharp, Brisbane to its bones, and packed with bangers. It knows exactly who it is talking to: anyone who has made a mixtape, recorded a song off the radio, watched Rage on a Saturday morning, treated a gig like a personality test, or been personally victimised by a younger person describing their formative music as vintage. Most of all, it is about the friends who knew you before you had sensible shoes, better boundaries, or the ability to leave an event at a reasonable hour.