With the Edinburgh Fringe just around the corner, there are plenty of performers out there bracing for the most intense experience of the year. And along with the pressures of having to create, perfect and publicise your show, there’s another looming challenge: what if you get a bad review? It’s something I’ve thought about as […]
Today, July 18 2014, sees the UK release of I Am Divine, a documentary by Jeffrey Schwarz about the mother of all alt-drag icons. This is a piece I wrote about Divine for the Curzon cinemas magazine. No one likes to be constantly identified with past glories and by the end of his life, […]
I used to be wary of describing myself as a critic. It just sounds mean, or like you know better than everyone else. But I’ve thought about it and these days, it’s a term I embrace: critic and proud! The reason for this is pretty much the same straightforward reason a lot of us still […]
Gushing reportage of the nuptials between glamorous, trailblazing artist and performer David Hoyle and Christeene Vale, the elegant debutante who has taken Texan high society by storm
This Friday it’s the second edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m producing and presenting for Chelsea Theatre. The last one was a belter – we had to turn people away! – and this one should be every bit as good. By way of plugging it, I’ve […]
Doctor Brown is the kind of act that makes audiences nervous: a rampant bearded clown who speaks largely gibberish and literally gets in your face, clambering over seats to sit in people’s laps, kiss them, even slap them. What kind of person would volunteer to spend an entire day trapped in an enclosed space with […]
I love a bit of Christeene. I flagged up her bravura flying visit to London in my round-up of cabaret highlights of 2013, and now she’s back in a big way, hitting Soho Theatre and Duckie’s Gay Shame ahead of a full Edinburgh run. This Q&A for Run-Riot is probably my favourite email interview that […]
The five years or so that I’ve spent covering cabaret and other kinds of alternative performance in a sustained way has been a wonderfully stimulating and rewarding experience. A vital part of that has been thinking about why I love these shows. A lot of it has to do (as I’ve recently written elsewhere) with […]
Last night was the first edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m putting on for Chelsea Theatre. I was really chuffed at how it all went: there was an incredible pop-up exhibition of David Hoyle’s paintings, with guided tour; cheeky vegetable sculptures by Rachel Porter; typically brilliant lip-synchery […]
As you’ll have noticed, there’s a good bit of anxiety around these days. I’ve got loads. You probably have too. I’m anxious about global things, like geopolitical instability and climate change; societal things, like employment prospects and dodgy urban planning; and personal things, like having a substandard body and shortchanging important relationships. Most people, […]
