When you’ve been around for a while, you pick up some moves. Now into their fourth decade of performance, musical comedy trio Fascinating Aïda demonstrate many a nifty turn in their latest run, Charm Offensive, which plays at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall until January 10, following a national tour. Funny, clever and unexpectedly moving, it’s a very worthy follow-up to 2012’s widely sold-out Cheap Flights, complementing the risqué gags and catchy melodies that distinguished that show with a richer emotional underpinning.
The act’s longevity is crucial to the evening’s success. Founder member Dillie Keane was joined by Adele Anderson early in the group’s life; Liza Pullman has been resident soprano for the past decade. (Anderson is on the right in the above picture by Johnny Boylan; Keane is centre and Pullman left, though neither of them looks much like that in person.) As you’d hope of an act of several decades’ standing, Fascinating Aïda can draw on an easy, charming on-stage chemistry – Keane is somewhat hangdog, Anderson wry and dry, Pullman plays the ingenue – and a hard-earned facility for the well-turned ditty. The consistently high quality of their songs’ lyrics and arrangements allows them to deploy a well-placed “wank”, “fuck” or “cunt” without bringing their copper-bottomed songwriting bona fides into question.
Their veteran status also affords them a considerable back catalogue of material, from recent favourites like Dogging and Cheap Flights to older material, including a heartfelt number about moving house. Such material, however, is used to bolster the set rather than underpin it; from snarky gags about Miley Cyrus to a rousing anti-Ofsted anthem à la Gilbert & Sullivan, there are more than enough topical references to prevent the group ever feeling like its own tribute act.
The trio’s longevity also allows them to draw on the experiences of ageing to considerable effect. There are songs here about realising with the death of one’s parents that “we’re next!”; about the baby-boomer generation having left the rest of us in the lurch; about struggling to be “down with the kids”. Some of the night’s outstanding moments are its unfunny songs: Keane and Pullman expertly deliver emotionally charged solos about the death of one’s mother and middle-aged dating respectively, while Anderson almost steals the show with a terrifically acted number sung from the perspective of a wife thrown over for an unremarkable peer (“Joyce?! Well, blow me, it’s Joyce…”), then does steal the show with Prisoner of Gender, a barnstormer ten years in the making about her own trans identity that received an appropriately rousing ovation from the audience. Focused on pre-adolescent feelings of alienation and despair, and funnier than the purely straight songs (it must be the only song out there to rhyme “thin and runty” with “I read Bunty”), it’s a remarkable number, courageous and conscientious and, one hopes, something that will personalise for many people an issue of which they have little direct experience.
At around two and a half hours including interval, it’s a generous set – perhaps over-generous, with a few numbers (about Facebook, rich girls or social taboos, for instance) that could conceivably be trimmed. And cheap gags at the expense of boomerang kids, Romanian immigrants or Tom Cruise being a “bender” occasionally threaten to undermine the boldly progressive edge established by sharp songs about education policy, toys aimed at girls or European economics. Overall, however, Charm Offensive is a terrifically confident outing that confirms Fascinating Aïda’s place at the top of their game. Call it time well spent.
