cabaret
12 Stone Toddler, Green Door Store, Brighton review – experimentalism can still be popMonday, 24 July 2017
Ten years ago Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler burst onto the scene with two off-the-wall albums of madly inventive pop-rock. They then vamoosed back out of existence. Now they’re back, preparing a third album for the Freshly Squeezed label, and... Read more... |
Pink Martini, Brighton DomeFriday, 14 April 2017
"An Evening with Pink Martini" consists of two sets by the Portland, Oregon group/mini-orchestra. Of these, the first takes the prize, but only by a very short lead. During it the nine-piece, led by Thomas Lauderdale at the piano, seem to relax and... Read more... |
Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President, Channel 4Wednesday, 18 January 2017
Tom Lehrer famously declared satire dead when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger not long after he'd bombed Cambodia back to the Middle Ages. Lehrer never wrote another song. Meanwhile other satirists battle on. Every day... Read more... |
HectorThursday, 10 December 2015
It would take a brave soul to mention Peter Mullan and “national treasure” in the same breath. To start with, he’d be more than clear which nation has his allegiance, and then suggest, in the gentlest possible way, that maybe he was, well, a wee bit... Read more... |
The Joey Arias Experience, Theatre Royal, BrightonThursday, 21 May 2015
Brighton whooped as if she had never seen risqué entertainment last night, as cabaret veteran Joey Arias brought his Billie Holiday-meets-bawdy-standup show to the Brighton Festival. Able to switch between sincere tribute and brilliantly,... Read more... |
JACK Quartet, Wigmore HallTuesday, 20 January 2015
The mixed grilled school of programme-making is not for the JACK Quartet. Contemporary, contemporary, and contemporary: that was the bill of fare last night at this challenging recital offered by the young American group, graduates of the Eastman... Read more... |
Forbidden Broadway, Vaudeville TheatreTuesday, 16 September 2014
“It takes a star to parody one,” wrote theartsdesk’s Edward Seckerson, nailing the essence of this immortal spoof-fest’s last incarnation at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Star quality was assured given the presence of Damian Humbley, peerless in... Read more... |
Lemper, SCO, Foster, Usher Hall, EdinburghSaturday, 16 August 2014
Twenty years ago Ute Lemper came to the Usher Hall to sing Kurt Weill. The young pretender to the Lotte Lenya throne performed then on a bare stage with little more than a piano as accompaniment. Last night, she swept onto a platform crammed with a... Read more... |
Ursula Martinez: My Stories, Your Emails, Purcell RoomWednesday, 06 August 2014
In her book How To Be a Woman, Times columnist Caitlin Moran explains the difference between strip clubs and burlesque shows, and why the latter are perfectly acceptable to feminism. “In burlesque, the power rests with the person taking their... Read more... |
CD: John Harle & Marc Almond - The Tyburn Tree: Dark LondonFriday, 21 February 2014
It's hard to countenance sometimes that there was an era where Marc Almond could have been a bona fide, chart-smashing pop star. His ability to parlay the archest of high camp and the most grotesque of low life into something digestible by genuine... Read more... |
Emil and the Detectives, National TheatreThursday, 05 December 2013
Read Erich Kästner’s 1928 novel about young Emil Tischbein and the Berlin boys he enlists to catch a thief, and you’ll come away feeling warm if slightly incredulous at the strong moral compass of all the kids and most of the adults. Gerhard... Read more... |
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Queen Elizabeth HallSaturday, 07 September 2013
It’s hard to imagine much upstaging Martyn Jacques, the indomitable falsetto frontman of the Tiger Lillies. The gaping mouth of an enormous mythical fish that seems to have swum straight from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch, projected right across... Read more... |
