Multi award-winning cabaret star Tommy Bradson is returning to Adelaide Fringe with two shows: a biting new vampire comedy and the ultimate late night party.

Two Sharp Teeth is the story of Kevin, a 437 year old vampire with chronic eczema who’s just a regular guy who catches the bus every morning, reads the news and goes on bad Tinder dates, like everyone else. He doesn’t want to bite people, he just wants to fit in and make friends.

Sex Cult Cousins LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! is a high-octane, low-brow hour of musical mayhem from the world’s latest and greatest rock-pop-punk-surf-swamp-jungle-KPop-emo supergroup.

Tommy is looking forward to bringing the two shows to Adelaide and doing something a bit different for audiences.

“I’m doing my first attempt at what I would call traditional standup, in that there’s no music, and no great narrative, or serious cross-dressing, which I may have done a lot of in the past,” he says.

“I am doing standup as a vampire, which is something that come about from a play that I’d written a year and a half ago, which was about a vampire who’d always wanted to be a ballet dancer, and his blood lust had gotten in the way of that. So, it was a big musical/dance/cabaret show I was touring. He was the centrepiece and after that show, I felt a great attachment to him, and I felt like there was a great attachment to him from the audiences, and I wanted him to live on somehow. So, I started doing variety nights, where I’d do five or 10 minutes as this vampire called Kevin, and it always went so beautifully, and it felt easier, and more graceful, and funnier, than anything I’d ever done before. So, I am bringing my very first show back to one of my most favourite festivals anywhere.”

With Fringe being his favourite festival, Tommy also loves Adelaide and the way the city comes to life during February and March.

“I did Melbourne Fringe first in 2009. Then I came to Adelaide in 2010 and I did it for a few consecutive years. Perhaps unknowingly to a large portion of the Australian and international audience, [Adelaide Fringe] is the second biggest arts festival in the world, and it happens in what is not a large city. So, I think there’s something wonderful about that,” he says.

“I feel like it’s an extraordinary thing that happens in what is an extraordinary place, and it’s made to feel like the beating heart of the carny, and the creative, and the comedy lifestyle, for a month of the yearly calendar, and that is not something to be shy about.”

But while he’s here, Tommy will spend much time indoors because, well, the whole vampire thing.

“I’ve been told I can’t go out in the sun too much, because I have to remain pale,” he laughs. “But I just want to go down to Glenelg, or cycle along the canal from the Arts Centre.”

Both Two Sharp Teeth and Sex Cult Cousins are playing at the Garden of Unearthly Delights, a venue Tommy is pleased to be returning to.

“My relationship with the Garden came off the back of my very first show. I got a couple of accolades from it and went to Edinburgh. And the minute I’d finished doing what was just a short weekend in Melbourne to try this thing out, everyone was like, ‘Oh, well, you’re obviously doing this festival, and that festival’, and I had no idea, I was just a kid putting his makeup on in the reflection of an oven, in the back kitchen of a pub. So I was invited to be in the Garden back then and I’ve only played the Garden during the Fringe since, which is a great opportunity,” he says.

And while Two Sharp Teeth follows the trials and tribulations of Kevin the lonely vampire, Sex Cult Cousins is set to rock your socks off.

“I have worked with Sam Leske, the guitarist, on any show I’ve really done, certainly in Adelaide, and also in other parts of Australia. We’ve done some stuff in New Zealand together, and at other festivals around the place. He is the best guitarist that I’ve ever heard, or worked with, and he’s one of Adelaide’s own,” Tommy says.

“He’s a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant guitarist and composer, and given that we’ve always done other gigs, there was always this project in mind that we would put a band together, and just do some silly, short, fast, loud, dance rock and roll, and that’s exactly what this is. I feel like a lot of rock and roll doesn’t make you want to dance. And I just want a show where every track makes me want to dance – the sort of thing our grandparents might remember, where everything was short and fast and loud and you weren’t listening to it, because you were there to dance. You weren’t just sort of staring up at the stage, you were moving, and I want to bring that back again.”

You can grab your tickets to Two Sharp Teeth HERE and Sex Cult Cousins LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! HERE.

For your chance to win tickets to Sex Cult Cousins LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! on Thursday 28 February at 10:45pm, simply comment below telling us what your ultimate party would look like (keep it clean and legal, folks!)

Please only enter the competition if you are able to attend the show on that date.

By Libby Parker