Arts editor HELEN MUSA previews the essence of an ‘edgy cabaret’ based around the seven necessary sins for women. 

Ever since Pope Gregory the Great came up with the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins there’s been a distinctly masculine flavour to the sins.

Now, a new composition by Canberra-raised composer and two-time Aria winner Sally Whitwell is about to turn that impression on its head by characterising the sins – pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth – as necessary positives helping women to triumph and survive in what is still a male-dominated world.

Canberra soprano Rachel Mink is joining Whitwell as composer and pianist to create an entertainment bearing the name of Mona Eltahawy’s provocative book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls.

Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born American journalist and social commentator who has been raising issues to do with women’s rights, patriarchy and Muslim political and social affairs. 

The sins that women and girls are not supposed to commit but need to if they are to harness their power, she identifies as anger, ambition, profanity, violence, attention-seeking, lust and power. 

Whitwell and Mink will be giving the show a dry run for Art Song Canberra in May, but the idea is that it will end up as an edgy cabaret show, with Whitwell chipping in so that it won’t be a monologue, but a dialogue.

Mink, who moved to Canberra from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore during covid, is already very well-known here for her glorious voice, praised by CityNews reviewer Rob Kennedy as “a voice that sways and swoons”. 

When I catch up with her there’s no doubt that she and Whitwell are cooking up something delightfully wicked.

Indeed, Mink suggests, the show may not be for the faint-hearted and it will definitely involve some language. 

It interests her how a lot of the sins are qualities often hurled at women in accusation – “You’re too angry”. “You’re too ambitious”. “You want too much attention” – leading to feelings of insecurity or body image problems.

“We’ll be doing a lot of storytelling about what sins actually mean.” Pride, for instance, is said to lead to a fall but does it really?

She and Whitwell haven’t started rehearsing although they’ve been planning the show for a year, so the actual arrangement of the songs in the nine-movement cycle is not yet set in stone. 

“Sally has written the libretto,” Mink says. “It was always imagined to be a fully-fledged cabaret show with spoken dialogue and words between the songs, but this performance for Art Song gives us a chance to figure out what a full stage version will look like.”

Seven Necessary Sins, Wesley Music Centre, Forrest, May 25.