“I sometimes think the most dangerous words are ‘normal’ and ‘natural’,” Grayson Perry said this week in the first episode of his new Channel 4 series, Who Are You? During the programme, Perry interviewed and created portraits of four people whose lives have much to tell us about subjectivity – how we experience the business of […]
Just a quick update on a couple of pieces that ran this week. QX Magazine picked up my post from last weekend about the future of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and ran it as a spread in their latest edition. Happily, we were able to update it to include the news, which broke a couple of […]
The next five years will be crucial to the long-term fate of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, the iconic south London pub and LGBTQ cabaret venue that is being sold to unidentified new owners. “I’ve got five years to get RVT turned around and made into a viable business, but for that to happen we […]
Neil Patrick Harris is a very interesting figure: a child star turned adult award-winner whose openness about being gay hasn’t hurt his mainstream success; in fact, he just played that ultimate outsider Hedwig on Broadway and Joe and Joan Six-Pack seem to love him all the more for it. In addition to his well-established love of musical theatre – which […]
A report on the inaugural Not Television festival at Chelsea Theatre, a weekend of shows involving collaboration between performers and audience members and the special atmosphere that resulted
The Not Television Festival is almost upon us! It doesn’t seem long ago that I was chatting to Francis Alexander, the artistic director of Chelsea Theatre, about the spirit of engagement that underpins Come With Me If You Want To Live, the cabaret night we’ve put on at the theatre twice now. Why couldn’t we […]
The relationship between performer and audience is crucial to cabaret: the form is arguably defined by the lack of a fourth wall and the possibility of unplanned collaborations between those on the stage and those off it. Cabaret doesn’t have a monopoly on such things but it’s the only form where they can be taken […]
In a post yesterday, I suggested that the direct political engagement with which we still associate Brecht, Weill and Weimar cabaret in general is harder to find on the current cabaret scene, even though we live in a world of war, division, oppression, inequality and exploitation scarcely less outrageous than that of the interwar period. […]
I didn’t know much about Andrew Logan and his Alternative Miss World pageant – except that the current title-holder was that awesome powerhouse of alt burlesque and more, Fancy Chance – until I saw the documentary The British Guide to Showing Off last year. I was pretty awestruck by the sensibility, scale, longevity and accumulated […]
“Come taste the wine, come hear the band!” As Ute Lemper reaches that line in that song (you know the one), she jerks a thumb over her shoulder to indicate ‘the band’ – though it’s a funny way of referring to the 60-odd classically trained musicians of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But then Friday night’s […]
