Another year down, another heaving goodie bag of cabaret goodness to trawl through in the name of the fool’s errand of selecting the year’s finest. I won’t pretend this is remotely objective or comprehensive – it’s just ten of the moments from 2013 that stand out for me. Let me know the bits you think I’ve forgotten below. In the meantime, let’s get cracking…
10. Miss Behave’s Gameshow
Sometimes simple is best. In recent years, Miss Behave’s performances have tended to see her in either default ringmaster or sideshow geekery modes: banging the drum for other acts or inserting various items into various parts of her head. Her new live Gameshow (aka Social Club and Pleasure Aid) at the London Wonderground was a breath of fresh air, and more. Its lo-fi cardboard aesthetic was the perfect backdrop for Miss B to unleash oodles of charm, energy and innovative chutzpah in the service of cleverly designed games that involved and entertained the audience while exploiting the ubiquity of mobile phones and carrying a satirical sting. A shame that injury put the kibosh on the planned Edinburgh run but she’s in NYC with La Soirée now so all’s well that ends well.
9. Dickie Beau
Sometimes complex is good too. Now, I have to admit an interest here: Dickie created the video performances to accompany the documentary I co-directed, This Is Not a Dream (pre-order your DVD now, plug plug), which is where the pictures above come from. Bias aside, I think these three short pieces are superb, melding Dickie’s trademark uncanny lipsynching to spoken word with witty considerations of the uses of moving-image technology and serious emotional punch. And that combination applies to several other major projects this year: the extraordinary Blackouts, an essay on celebrity, ageing and addiction drawing on exclusive audio of Marilyn Monroe, performed at Soho Theatre; Lost in Trans, a future shock of a performance about gender and identity performed at the Southbank Centre as part of Dickie’s own Queering Voices weekend; and An Audience with Willy Little, a collaboration with Mel Brimfield hilariously channelling post-war British entertainment. And his winning the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award means that in 2014, you’ll see his new project, Re-Member Me, produced at the Barbican.
8. Duelling festivals
It’s fair to say there was a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth when the London Festival of Cabaret announced its arrival on the scene earlier in the year. The issue was its equation of ‘cabaret’ with ‘songbook’ – an unreconstructed approach that neglected to recognise the incredible eclecticism of the city’s cabaret boom of the past decade, which also incorporates burlesque, variety, drag, circus, live art and loads more. Soon enough an alternative grassroots festival sprung up, running alongside LFoC in autumn with a much wider remit. Rocky beginning notwithstanding, both sides were, for the most part, open to dialogue, collaboration and a bit of piss-taking, preventing a full-blown collapse into People’s Front of Judea-vs-Judean People’s Front absurdity. Overall, the amount of passion for cabaret on display throughout the whole affair can only be a good thing for the form’s future in London.
7. Christeene gobbing on punters at Vogue Fabrics
For one gloriously scabrous weekend in June, Christeene descended on London like some kind of demon whore ass witch outta Texas. Looking like shit but shining with love, Christeene is the real deal, a sacrificial lamb in a soiled pillow case takin’ it hard for all us sinners. She tore up Duckie with her backing dancers, and creator Paul Soileau gave a fascinating insight into the character’s genesis at a Soho Theatre masterclass. But the most killer experience was Christeene’s set at Vogue Fabrics, which not only featured the act’s fabulous songs and surprisingly tight choreography (synchronised umbrellas!) but left nowhere to run when she started spitting at the audience. As Soileau later explained, “it’s her version of a kiss”. Bless.
6. The British Music Hall Society’s fiftieth anniversary weekend at Wilton’s Music Hall and the Southbank Centre’s Weimar weekend
What’s old was once new. In amongst all the exciting innovation that cabaret thrives on, this year saw a couple of remarkable weekend-long events devoted to activating the deep roots of today’s scene. As part of its year-long The Rest is Noise season, the Southbank Centre offered a three-day focus on Weimar Germany, which was full of items to delight the discerning cabaret-goer, from Meow Meow giving her sensational version of Pirate Jenny in The Threepenny Opera and Liza Minnelli on top form to intriguing talks about the period. Shining a spotlight on another branch of contemporary cabaret’s family tree, the British Music Hall Society’s fiftieth anniversary bash at Wilton’s later in the year was another affair to luxuriate in. From extensive programme and costume collections to revelatory panel discussions from voices as diverse as Ken Dodd and John Major (who confirmed “it’s not as big a step as you’d think” from the circus to the Commons), the love for this vintage form was palpable, even if there was a danger of appreciation settling into aspic and anecdotage – the very kind of backward thinking numerous contributors to the Weimar weekend warned against. Still, Mat Ricardo ably represented the current scene, and you couldn’t but grin at Brick Lane Music Hall doing the Lambeth Walk with full spoons and pearly schmutter (above).
5. Gay Bingo signing off in style at the Hackney Empire
For a decade, Gay Bingo has been one of the flagship enterprises of east London’s alternative drag performance scene, a properly raucous mess of music, laughs, dance, politics, balls and 69 courtesy of Jonny Woo, Ma Butcher and John Sizzle. In October, on the occasion of its tenth birthday, Bingo went out with a bang, taking over the Hackney Empire for a sensational send-off event. Obviously the up-close-and-personal element of the night was diminished in the huge venue but this was thoroughly offset, especially in the second half, by show-stopping production numbers, a huge supporting cast and, best of all, a glorious sense of east London’s queer performance community joining together en masse in proud celebration. The value of such events was underlined by the bravura finale, a colossal takedown of Putin’s newly virulent bigotry to a backdrop of ejaculating domes of St Basil’s and Boney M. Watch it above.
4. Catherine Bennett shaping fragile little minds
This klutzy, curly, tuna-munching, dino-digging paleontologist pop star is not only a joy to watch but a bona fide new role model. CB was invented by irreverent performance artist Bryony Kimmings, who plays her, and Kimmings’s then-nine-year-old niece Taylor, who’s her manager, and indeed makes most of the meaningful career decisions. The duo were determined to create a celebrity whose appeal wasn’t based on fame, sex and money but on friendship and imagination. Quietly but crucially, she would also be a rebuttal to the regressively sexist images of womanhood that flood the mainstream. As an art project, CB spanned quirky, catchy music videos; the superb grown-up multimedia show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, co-starring Taylor, which played Edinburgh and Soho Theatre; and, perhaps most importantly, personal appearances at schools, conferences and on media around the country. The singer’s fans now include MPs and Yoko Ono, which is fab, but nothing compares to the rapt attention which which I saw one eleven-year-old girl devour one performance. Afterwards, she cautiously told Bennett she wanted to be a marine biologist; Bennett encouraged her; her face lit up. You could tell her world had just opened up that bit more. That’s why I’m #soCB.
3. Rev Billy not going to jail
If Catherine Bennett has come a long way in a short time, Rev Billy Talen is a past master of what he has called “expressive politics” – the combination of performance and activism that, to my mind, is the future of both live entertainment and social change. Looking and sounding like a televangelist but preaching the radical need for economic and environmental reform, Talen has lead the Church of Stop Shopping since 1999. This year has seen the Church – which performed at Battersea Arts Centre in July – making interventions like the one above at Manhattan branches of JP Morgan Chase, dressed as, and in the name of, the golden toads that were made extinct by climate-change-causing activities like deforestation backed by banks like Chase. They use song, speech, dance and humour to suggest to workers and customers of the bank that they rethink their consumer choices. For this, in November, Talen and choirmaster Nehemiah Luckett were arrested for riot, trespass, menace and unlawful assembly. They faced a year behind bars for this peaceful (not to mention very funny) protest. When it came to court this month, reason prevailed and the more serious charges were dropped, removing the threat of prison time, though it remains to be seen whether all legal action against the church will end. It’s a disturbing development for American democracy but the kind of bad review the Church should be proud of. They’re pissing off the right people.
2. David Hoyle getting drunk
David Hoyle getting trolleyed on the stage of the South Bank’s Purcell Room as part of Duckie’s Vauxhall Bacchanal was always an intriguing prospect: his substantial history of performing under the influence is littered with both electrifying moments and artistic, emotional and physical upsets. But David Hoyle on Alcohol was less car-crash spectacle than lift-off triumph. Well lubricated he might have been (and boy, did the bubbly flow) but Hoyle was at his lucid, perceptive and hilariously subversive best, rising to the occasion with a bravura peroration targeting his usual bêtes noires, from militarism to complacency. Perhaps most impressive was the relatively decorous aplomb with which he handled technical snags, his accomplice Ashleigh Ryder’s flirting with belligerence and even the kind of half-arsed naysaying from the audience that at other times would lead to evisceration. To my mind it was one of the outstanding events of the year but, rather fabulously, you can watch the whole thing here and make up your own mind. I might be wrong. I was pissed myself.
1. Lynn Ruth Miller’s sanitary pads
Who would have thought that suffering an onslaught of sanitary pads at the hands of a 79-year-old would be the highlight of the cabaret year? The irrepressible Lynn Ruth Miller’s ‘Granny’s Gone Wild’ was one of the treats of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe – a mix of stand-up, singing and conversation that swiftly set aside any patronising “aww” factor with Miller’s wit, empowered savvy, emotional honesty and effortless audience engagement. It won the TO&ST Edinburgh cabaret award from among a remarkably eclectic field of nominees (and will come to Soho Theatre in March). Fellow nominees Briefs deserve a very special mention for the moment in their show, The Second Coming, in which mainstream Fringe audiences were confronted with a joyously exuberant (albeit simulated) moment of scat-themed bestiality. But ultimately, for all it said about age, gender, aggression and togetherness, an old lady lobbing feminine hygiene products at her crowd with gay abandon – and the audience gaily lobbing them back – is my cabaret highlight of 2013.
And as a little bonus, let’s end with Alp Haydar’s Maya Angelou, just because.
