The Kransky Sisters are an Australian musical comedy trio created, written and performed by Annie Lee (Mourne) and Christine Johnston (Eve) initially with Michele Watt (Arva – 2000 til 2006) and later with Carolyn Johns (Dawn – 2007 onwards). During their act, the Kransky Sisters tell off-beat, macabre stories accompanied by cover versions of popular songs. The fictional sisters live an old-fashioned life style and travel in a 1958 Morris Major between performances. The trio’s members play tuba, guitar, musical saw and a 1960s reed keyboard, as well as bizarre instruments such as toilet brushes and kitchen pots.
The Kransky Sisters were created by Annie Lee and Christine Johnston in Brisbane in 2000. Johnston grew up in Geeburg, she provides “experimental vocals, including bird calls, and uses her voice as a medium by which visual objects and the subliminal or pedestrian aspects of human experience can be interpreted. In combination with this interest [she] brings to her performances a dramatic visual component and a strong sense of personal style and humour.”
Leah Mercer of RealTime Arts caught their performance of Baggage in November 2005, she described “their earnest delivery and spot-on arrangements mean that the [trio] never descend into cheap parody; they play for laughs but never at their characters’ expense. Full of memorable moments (Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’, complete with yodeling and some wild Salvation Army tambourine moves, tops my list) Baggage unfolds as a series of stories gathered during the Kransky’s recent tour of regional Queensland. Continuing that great Australian tradition of the misfit hero.”
Their fictional back story is that they come from Esk, a real rural town in Queensland. The two eldest sisters, Mourne and Eve Kransky, are full biological sisters and have lived together all their lives. Mourne and Eve’s father was a travelling salesman for the (fictional) Asbestos Cookware Company. Their mother left their father to be with his brother, who is Arva and Dawn’s father. The two brothers have not spoken since and Mourne and Eve ostracise Arva and Dawn, using their guilt over the affair to dominate them.
Arva, who first toured with the family band, has now joined the Hornbell Military Marching Band. Dawn, the youngest sister, has taken leave from her job as trolley librarian at the Esk Hospital and now tours in Arva’s place. The sisters wear the same clothes and Mourne and Eve speak with similar mannerisms. Mourne, the eldest, is clearly the matriarch, sternly keeping control of her younger sisters and doing most of the speaking during a concert, while Eve, a vegetarian who harbours secret passions, eerily echoes many of Mourne’s phrases, though she has enough independence to occasionally add to Mourne’s stories. Arva and Dawn almost never speak.
The songs they play are learnt from listening to the “wireless” and they drive to their concerts in a 1958 Morris Major. Sometimes the songs are incomplete thanks to an interruption in their reception and the sisters, lacking any normal cultural context, often seem not to fully understand what they are singing about. One of their neighbours has a computer and has made their official website for them.
