Dinner with Kate Leigh, the Gangster Queen
Image: The gang’s all here, DINNER WITH KATE LEIGH Image: Realtime Photography and Video
Surry Hills has many secrets in its long history, but few are more colourful or as vicious as Kate Leigh, one of the world’s few female gangland leaders, and the subject Vashti Hughes new performance piece, Dinner with Kate Leigh, the Gangster Queen.
In the ‘20s and ‘30s, Leigh ruled Surry Hills and nearby suburbs in concert with a gang of brutal razor wielding thugs as she fought rival Tilly Devine, who was based in Woolloomooloo, for supremacy in a world permeated with cocaine, sly grog, prostitution and gambling.
Once Sydney’s wealthiest females, Leigh’s world came crashing down in 1954 when the tax office bankrupted her over unpaid taxes, and she was forced to seek the help of her nephew, William Beahan, who ran a green grocer’s shop at 212 Devonshire Street, while Kate kept the grog flowing out the back.
That premises is now the Jazzy Cafe, and on Saturday March 18 and Saturday 22 April the premises will be redolent with history once again as Vashti Hughes, Ross Johnston and Dale Truman bring Leigh and her cronies back to life with music, food, booze and maybe blood.
As performers, Hughes and Johnston know Leigh well, having performed her in Hughes’ show Razorhurst in 2011 and 2012.
“When Larry Writer’s book, Razor, came out in 2001 I thought that these stories were so incredible,” Vashti Hughes, performer said.
Limited to 20 people, Dinner with Kate Leigh starts at 5.45pm on the corner of Little Riley Street and Steel Lane before proceeding to the Jazzy Cafe for anti pasta dinner and main performance, to be followed by a hero dessert, and yes, there will be grog as Jazzy cafe is licensed.
