Dear me, it’s been way too long since I was on here. I know it’s a cliché about blogs that you start enthusiastically and then let them tail off, and in that respect I seem to have become a cliché pretty quickly.
My excuse for such negligence is that I’ve been doing lots of other cool stuff:
Turning! Myra DuBois as Margaret Thatcher
• BURN, the platform for moving images by cabaret artists that I run, has gone monthly and is doing well at Hackney Attic first Sunday of each month. Last week BURN got to present a midnight scratch-n-sniff screening of Polyester at Amy Grimehouse’s FilthFest tribute to John Waters. Dirty! And at last night’s Thatcher Memorial Special, we saw on-screen multiple Maggies courtesy of Gay Bingo (Wilson Phillips-history-of-80s-Britain version), Alp Haydar (megalomaniac Muslim mother version) and Paul Kindersley (death-mask make-up tutorial version). Myra DuBois channelled the Iron Lady live with considerable aplomb, despite the curveball of a genuine UKIP European parliamentary candidate getting in on the action. The candidate was pretty polite during the PMQ section of the show then spoiled it by trying to elbow her way backstage afterwards. Takes all sorts.
Next BURN is Sunday May 4 at Hackney Attic.
Come With Me If You Want To Live April line-up
• Come With Me If You Want To Live, my first attempt at producing my own live cabaret show, kicks off this Friday at Chelsea Theatre. I’m made up at the performers I’ve roped in – David Hoyle! Dickie Beau! Eve Ferret! Figs in Wigs! – and everyone at Chelsea has been wonderful. It’s pretty daunting and has a lot of moving parts to keep track of but I’m hoping it’ll be a blast. The idea is, first of all, for it to be a laugh, but secondly to be a showcase for what I love about cabaret: the idea that it’s a collaboration between performers and audience, that each person in the room has agency, that everyone matters. Little bit of politics there…
Come With Me If You Want To Live debuts Friday April 11 at Chelsea Theatre.
Guardian Masterclass Reinventing the Critic
• Guardian Masterclass: Reinventing the Critic is a one-day course in the Grauniad’s hit masterclass series – and a welcome opportunity for me to sit down and actually articulate, in what I hope will be a useful way, all the swirling notions that buzz round the back of my head week to week, year to year, of what doing criticism actually means, what its value is, and what its role in society can be. Heavy! But will include pictures of Catwoman, and an interview with Steve Bennett of Chortle about his distinctive approach. And in due course it looks like there’ll be a way of getting some of these ideas out to people who can’t make it to a £220 event as well, which would be an added bonus.
Reinventing the Critic Masterclass is at the Guardian on Sunday April 27.
Cabaret Chinwag
• Edinburgh plans! The future of TO&ST, the Time Out & Soho Theatre Edinburgh Cabaret Award (previous winners: Lady Rizo in 2012 and, in 2013, Lynn Ruth Miller, whom I profiled for Time Out here) remains undecided for now but I’ve got a couple of exciting Edinburgh assignments in the works, including a rather prestigious reviewing gig and hosting a weekly get-together at Fringe Central. Called Cabaret Chinwag, it’ll be a weekly natter about the hottest shows and latest rumblings in cabaret at the Fringe, with chummy interviews, heated debates, irrelevant interjections and a lo-fi performance or two. Plus mingling afterwards.
Cabaret Chinwag will be at Fringe Central at 2.30pm on Wednesdays during the Fringe (Aug 6, 13 and 20).
RunRiot Review of Shindig and Thursgays
• Oh yeah, and writing. I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing and reviewing lately as well. In case you missed them, here are links to some recent pieces:
for the Guardian, a profile of Ellen DeGeneres in the run-up to the Oscars and an interview with Julian Clary;
for Sight & Sound, a review of Bette Bourne: It Goes With The Shoes and a review of a book about Showgirls;
for RunRiot, a review of Bourgeois & Maurice’s Shindig and Yeast London Cabaret at Thursgays;
and for Time Out, a review of Tom at the Farm, Xavier Dolan’s yummy new Hitchcockian thriller.
So haven’t been idle, honest, and still got a bit of a plateful for the next couple of months. But will be doing my best to keep on blogging – got a couple of pieces I’m hoping to get up in the next day or two, if that’s not tempting fate. Always nice not to be a cliché if possible…
