When I boarded my 6.30am flight to Brisbane this morning I did not expect to be wandering back to my hotel room in King George Square at 10pm covered in champagne, bubble mixture and foam.

By some happy accident I managed to get my three day work trip to my company’s interstate base to coincide with the Brisbane Festival (running from the 3rd to the 24th September) – a fact I only clued up to when I meandered down to a fuchsia bathed South Bank in search of food.

Lit up in hot pink with food stalls, a bar and two performance tents the festival hub is a gorgeous mish mash of culture and eccentricity on the bank of the Brisbane River. After a trip to the bar and the food stands it seemed only right to make the most of the night and see what the festival programme had to offer – a hard choice with Montaigne playing in one tent and the circus/burlesque/cabaret extravaganza Blanc de Blanc in the other. The latter (by Strut & Fret Production House) won me over and I joined the queue outside the Spiegeltent ready for whatever was about to happen. And what an adventure it was.

Blanc de Blanc is sordid, silly, sexy and superb. It varies from brilliant aerial performances to comedic burlesque and everything in between with a sultry Frenchman as the Master of Ceremonies and a cheeky Joel Grey-esque sidekick who absolutely steals the show. I don’t want to spoil the multitude of surprises this production throws at its audience, but suffice it to say that champagne is a feature (as the name would suggest) and if you sit anywhere near the front you will get wet!