THEGAYUK

Author: Sasha Selavie

  • THEATRE REVIEW | McQueen, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London

    Crass yob or fashion god? Both, actually. All bile, venom and spunk, Alexander McQueen was a mutant oik messiah, a sartorial serial-killer maniacally slashing mediocrity into mouth-watering magnificence. ★★★★

    But that’s only when his brutally bi-polar, chemsex-twisted muse flew, of course, and new play McQueen – where he’s called Lee, his preferred name throughout – unflinchingly skewers his fatal, full-stop bungee-jump into oblivion.

    If the plot’s simple, the treatment, like McQueen himself, is insolently audacious. It’s the night of McQueen’s suicide, and an anxious Lee – (Stephen Wight) is surprised late at night by impulsive house intruder Dahlia (Carly Bawden).

    Instantly, Dahlia’s nerdy, conflicted, fan-girl worship acts as mental crystal-meth to Lee, and triggers an elegiac night of non-stop revelations. Burst after imagistic burst reveals Lee’s muses, mentors, likings and loathings, collapsing time and space with shockingly raw character expóses.

    That’s where McQueen truly impresses. If his supposedly blunt, scumbag genius was secretly held in contempt by snobs – Givenchy called him ‘le football thug’ – Lee in reality was painfully self-aware and insightful. One scathing scene gorgeously massacres smug faux-sophistication; a vapid reporter’s dissection of a woman is witheringly undone by Lee’s breezily compassionate take.

    So forget strict, dull, lazy biography nailed dead and rotting to the stage. Instead, this is fraught, suicide theatre superbly deployed as a multi-media, psychic minefield. Mime, pumping catwalk themes and video backdrops forensically flesh out Lee’s screaming inner self with an assurance clumsy naturalism would kill for.

    It’s an exact, brilliantly nuanced barometer of a frenzied gay genius’s mind. Time and again, music indelibly stains the action and spotlights Lee’s moods, from Nirvana’s brooding ‘Come As You Are’ to the hallucinatory grandeur of Handel’s Sarabande. And linear logic, throughout, is blatantly sacrificed for wrenchingly exact, emotional precision.

    That’s McQueen’s towering strength, shatteringly used in Lee’s lynchpin exchange with fashionista Isabella Blow, his triple-goddess muse, patron and financial angel.

    As played by Tracy-Ann Oberman, Blow’s a virtuoso study in slinky, fatally insecure hauteur. Both terminally damaged, she and Lee cling like frightened children to each other, as needy, emotionally naked and iconic as Rolling Stone magazine’s cover of John Lennon cradled by Yoko Ono.

    But that beautiful innocence makes only half of a shocking, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf brutality. It’s as horribly fascinating as watching slow, incremental torture, a frenzied kaleidoscope of pain, grief, betrayal and back-stabbing, as Blow’s callously thrown aside, and Lee’s vicious need to succeed shapes his signature, ‘savage beauty’ ethic.

    Directly sourced from Darwin’s take on nature – ‘red in tooth and claw’ – Lee’s manic, unstable, all-or-nothing creative process was pure Russian Roulette. Onstage, nightmare despair follows each ecstatic peak, awesomely mimicked by surging son et lumiere effects, as Lee, anxious, fragile and broken, exits his unbearable, trampoline existence to Marilyn Manson’s nihilistic, misfit anthem, ‘Beautiful People’.

    Oddly inspirational, a slow-burn triumph of subtle but often savage insight, McQueen deliberately spits on hysterical, West End Wendy fireworks. Instead, it’s far more rewarding; resonant, fully adult theatre worthy of Tony Kushner and Patrick Marber, and more remarkably contemporary than either.

    Until 7 November 2015. Tickets: 020 7930 8800; trh.co.uk

    By Sasha DeSuinn | @msSashaDarling

  • Transformer: A Night With Lou Reed At Soho Theatre, Polymorphous Perversity

    Does gay culture have Alzheimer’s or rather, collective amnesia? Sure, for straight, non-artistic philistines Jonny Woo seems ground-breaking, but truthfully, he’s one rich link in a historically brilliant chain. ★★★★

    The once-signature beard, teamed with trowelled-on make-up? Straight from the Cockettes, the 1960s, San Franciscan performance art troupe, via David Hoyle’s car-crash Liza Minelli make-over. Ditto the confrontational rants, identity politics and shot-gun conflation of trash and fine art – uh, hello, John Waters and Divine, anyone?

    And let’s not forget gorgeous lifestyle peacocks Quentin Crisp and Colin Swift (don’t know them? Do a Google), the epitomes of waspishly debonair decadence. ‘I love watching ballet’, Crisp hissed, ‘You never know when the dancers will slip and break their necks’.

    And something of that same, devilish relish instantly curdles easy, audience enjoyment tonight. Because, if ever a show demanded snarling contempt for punters, it’s this. See, Lou Reed – the ragingly gay, rock ‘n’ roll beast so timidly evoked tonight – wasn’t even borderline polite. Screw social graces – he brutally massacred finesse with the aplomb of a fresh, human turd served at a Buckingham Palace banquet. Sure, Woo serves up a live, Reed songbook and patter, but it’s a pale, disappointing Xerox of Warhol sleaze, venom and spunk, West End Wendies doing a Lou Reed-Lite karaoke.

    Let’s get specific. The biggest, howlingly apparent problem is a skewed, dramatic spine, all Hunchback of Notre Dame excess but no pay-off. It’s the sin of pride. perhaps, or, less religiously, King Midas Syndrome, the belief that sexually diverse mind-sets turn everything they touch to pure gold.

    Not here. Unshakeably sure of his own cachet, Woo simply assumes, limpet-like, that his blessed touch automatically annexes and glorifies all things queer in his own image. If only, if only, as Tennessee Williams should’ve said to Salvador Dali. Full points to Jonny for even trying, but I deeply missed Lou’s clinically insane, live-gig frazzled mania, nowhere evident tonight.

    It’s unfair, perhaps, to compare Transformer to the utterly deranged, swamp-rock transvestism of The Christeene Machine, another Soho Theatre stand-out. But frankly, Jonny, bless his surely rock ‘n’ roll heart, just pussyfoots, and merely apes, but never memorably embraces, piss-stained leather pants dementia.

    Still – as with the filthiest, most depraved sinner – there are points of brilliant redemption. Breaking London drag superstar Pretty Miss Cairo is an outstanding Candy Darling, even though that transsexual, Warhol luminary would rather cut her bashful, self-effacing dick off than get naked on stage. And better still is Fi McCluskey’s jaw-droppingly stunning Valerie Solanas, the militant feminist who shot Warhol nearly point-blank in ’68. Reciting still-incendiary verses from the SCUM manifesto – the Society for Cutting Up Men – McClusky gives every ounce of witchy, confrontational venom a sublime, poison perfection.

    So should you see Transformer, and part with your hard-earned, precious shekels? Oh god, yes, even for just the memory of that glorious, unrepeatable era when the streets of early 70s Soho were awash with drugs, pansexuality and promise – a time, we hope, might soon come again.

  • OP-ED: The Complete Films Of John Waters Film Season

    The Complete Films Of John Waters (Every Goddam One Of Them…) @ British Film Institute, Southbank Centre, September And October, 2015 – A Personal Appreciation 

    ‘Why are so many great fans of mine dead, and so many assholes alive? Life’s a lottery, and it’s not a fair one’. – John Waters, trash cult film director.

    Has gay film director John Waters been miscast from birth? Tall, thin and frighteningly dapper, with trademark, pencilled-on moustache, he’d be a pitch-perfect mortician’s assistant. Who else could handle the awkward absurdities of the American Way of Death with such dry, hilarious aplomb? Who else would even care if a deceased’s eyelids are super-glued tight shut in an open casket, let alone whether a satin, coffin lining’s the precise shade of puce?

    Pope John Waters, that’s who, the legendary, fan-appointed, sacred head of filth and the unthinkable, in short, everything that makes straight, reactionary bigots wet their panties and pray for deliverance.

    A man as passionately devoted to popping taboos and dumb preconceptions as a teenager nuking zits, Waters infamously persuaded Divine, his outsize, female impersonator ‘star’ to eat fresh dog-sh*t live on camera in Water’s first, break-out feature, Pink Flamingoes.

    He’s also kick-started the career of one Johnny Depp (the Juvenile lead in Polyester) and in Hairspray (the original, with Divine, not Travolta) fearlessly exposed the endemic, white-on-black early 60’s racism the US is still trying to retroactively erase.

    So, a PC paragon, then, flawlessly ticking every box possible, from gay, trans, plus-size and anti-racist rights? Well, of course, and how could he not be? As a thinking, intelligent, self-aware gay man, shouldn’t sensitivity to minorities automatically come with the territory?

    But remarkably, what seems like simple humanity to you and I still sparks redneck resentment towards John’s oeuvre. Perhaps that’s why he’s still not quite internationally acclaimed to the extent he deserves, which hopefully, this ongoing season of his entire output at London’s BFI will correct.

    Cinematically, he’s often compared to Russ Meyer, the big-breast-obsessed sleaze supremo, who rushed out nearly two dozen movies best described as deranged, Carry On antics pumped up on (female) steroids. Now misleadingly treated as art-house fodder, they’re actually nothing but naive, rush-produced ‘jerk-off movies for guys who liked big tits’, as John fondly recalls. And faced with real, art-house depravity mocking his own tastes – John’s trans star Divine looked like a bizarre, buxom woman – Meyer was ‘always uneasy. But he made exploitation films for the exploitation theatres, and I made exploitation films for art theatres’. Tellingly, his own, sexually candid work, is both absurdly cartoonish and ironically deadpan; think Family Guy re-imagined as Queer As Folk set in the American boondocks.

    It’s a singular, kitsch-with-knives perspective that, to date, has spawned seventeen, disturbingly strange, cinematic offspring. Does he have a particular favourite amongst his filmic brood? ‘I like them all, they’re like children, but children with learning disabilities. But generally, you root for the ones that didn’t do well at the box-office. And I’m very fond of Cecil B. Demented, my political movie, but I hope I have more sense of humour than Cecil did, because he was a fascist, and like all cult leaders, they never think they’re funny’.

    Not surprisingly – during fifty years of movie-making – John’s also explored related art-forms like writing, one-man shows and photography, each a twisted, trademark success. Although always an art collector – ‘I had a silver, Andy Warhol Jackie O print that cost a hundred dollars my girl-friend(!?) gave me back in high school in 1964’ – John didn’t start showing his photo-art until the early 90s. Recently, this summer, London gallery Sprueth Magers hosted his ‘Beverly Hills John’ photo exhibition, a collection in typically brilliant bad taste.

    And the sickest shot on show? Easily, Jackie O in Dallas the day of JFK’s assassination, with ‘Death Dude’ from the Scream slash-flicks superimposed smiling beside her. Gee, how’s that for spitting on the great-for-straights, cornball American Dream?

    But that, of course, is just a splinter of John’s fabulously subversive iceberg. Quite aptly, his blanket desecration, of politics, gender and family values was a stellar inspiration for irreverent, punk rock guru and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. ‘He took the image of Divine from Female Trouble and appropriated it on a T-Shirt without Divine’s name or the Film’s title, and when Divine started seeing all these punk women, he was like, ‘Oh my god, I feel so Plain Jane!’.

    Divine being ironic, surely, but if punk’s lost all shock value with pierced couture on every high street, John’s scathing satires still bite. Extreme in every way – except in his debonair, butter-soft demeanour – he even adores fellow auteur David Lynch’s otherworldly record releases. ‘Well, his music to me is perfect for funerals’. Even at your own? ‘Yes, I think it’d be good. I asked Nico (legendary Velvet Underground chanteuse and deep-voiced diva) if she’d sing at my funeral and she said, deadpan, ‘Oh, when are you going to die?’

    It’s a question one imagines John asking repeatedly during his one-time obsessive attendance at murder trials. ‘Any villain that was hated by everyone made me interested, as when I first read about serial killer Richard Speck, who killed a whole bunch of nurses. But I don’t go to trials anymore, I teach in prisons and try and get people out on parole, and I think if I hadn’t become a film-maker I would have become a defence lawyer. But as a judge, I’d be a pushover; I’d be a liberal, then they’d (the accused) get out and kill me!’

    Let’s hope not. Shockingly people-friendly and approachable, in an era of routinely unavailable and sulky celebrities, John’s happy to pose for fans. ‘Why wouldn’t I? I’m always on my bicycle in Provincetown and the minute I stop, everyone wants a cell-phone shot. So of course I’m happy to pose for a picture. Well, aren’t they my customers who’ve paid my rent all summer?’

    Admirably, John also applies that breezy, beautiful modesty to his artistry, particularly writing, a process often pompously described as agonising by less gifted authors. ‘I write every day, it’s never easy, it’s never satisfying, there are good and bad days, but it’s not fun writing a book, but not torture, either. If I want fun, I’ll have a drink on a Saturday night. I mean, I have a job, so that’s good, my life is great, it’s not like I’m some tragic artist who’s never been understood. Sure, I didn’t get good reviews for a long time, but I had an eager audience from the beginning, so I’m hardly whining’.

    Amen to that, and John’s eager, constantly attentive audience is spreading like an unstoppable, LGBT tsunami. Catch a ride on his filthily gorgeous tide ASAP. Find out more at www.bfi.org.uk/whatson

  • Anna Calvi at Meltdown: Hellfire Passion in Pantyhose

    Rock guitarist Anna Calvi is living feminist wildfire. Her 2011, game-changer debut album instantly castrated sacred notions of male guitar god supremacy, and tonight, her beautiful heresy’s fiercer still.

    Is she straight? Bi? Undecided? Who cares? Isn’t mystery and mystique the most panting aphrodisiac ever? And in a web-scape awash with Miley Cyrus booty, frankly, flesh-flashing is beyond passé.

    So back to Miz Calvi, the darling of indie-kids of all ages. You’ve seen her, maybe, on You Tube or Jules Holland, all crimson, neck-high blouse, raw-wound lipstick and black toreador pants, her classic, Michaelangelo mouth constantly kissing desire. Petite but poised, her hair as tight-gripped as a suppressed climax, she’s perfect pop androgyny, a female Pete Doherty of startling cupidity.

    Not tonight, however, in her highest profile gig yet at ex-Talking Head David Byrne’s Meltdown. Hushed and expectant, eyes straining for Calvi’s entrance, we’re unexpectedly caressed by a low, almost subsonic, hum, as twelve white-cloaked choristers file onstage. Forming a protective crescent moon, they frame the suddenly-here Calvi, a rock-goddess Joan Of Arc dwarfed by her trademark guitar.

    And quite properly, in accord with the aura of imminent rapture, it’s as if Calvi’s signature scarlet blouse has bled out to pure, satin-weave white from the streaming wounds of her sung passion. Ah, but if the trappings, ambiance and yearning seem screamingly religious, they’re focused on human transcendence, not some dumb, mythical sky-guy; Calvi’s way too sharp to fall for manic dogma.

    Rather, she’s the lead attack angel of bliss, frenzy and scorching connection, an imperial killer queen drunk on her own guitar ecstasies. Miraculously fusing flamenco, rock and reverb over furious, stampeding drums, her mezzo-soprano simply soaring with liquid libido, Calvi is pure, delirious, multiple sonic orgasm.

    Singing with excess, storming ambition and sheer abandon inconceivable to X-Factor mediocrities, Calvi, incredibly, utterly redefines Torch Song sizzle for the 21st Century.

    Okay, the set’s not all deathless swoon and smoulder – especially when a duet with lean, tanned preppy David Byrne arguably breaks the flow – but Calvi’s glacial, blue-steel guitar brilliance is a constant beacon to otherworldliness.

    And what fabulous harbours that beacon signals; Edith Piaf’s ‘Jezebel’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘On Fire’ and Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’, seamlessly buttressed by ‘The Devil’ and ‘Blackout’, Calvi’s own glorious odes to the ineffable.

    Moving like no other guitar player, part matador, part frenzied, sacredly erotic Ken Russell nun, Calvi brandishes her snow-white Stratocaster like a reincarnated Boudicca pissing on male patriarchy.

    Far more than Kate Perry, Jessie J or even the ferociously trashy, but culturally impotent, Courtney Love, Calvi crucially reclaims impeccable pop dignity for standalone, female artistry. No, she’s not competing with the boys in their playground – her conceptual aplomb dwarfs that demeaning idiocy – and has no need or wish to.

    Instead, as she exits in a susurrus of chanted, hymnal Latin, Calvi – along with like-minded mavericks Bjork, Laurie Anderson and Diamanda Galas – is building new platforms for new voices, and new expressions of confronting gender. To do that in the world of pop and rock is impressive enough, but – like David Bowie before her – she’s helping pan-sexuality pour free, naked and unrestrained in an explosive, cultural ferment. Anna Calvi – the warrior-queen harbinger of a world way beyond binary, us-and-them stupidity? Perhaps there’s no greater praise than that.

  • REVIEW: L’escargot Upstairs Private Members Club

    Is Soho artistically dead? Hardly. Greek Street’s L’escargot – the superlative, French restaurant open since 1927 – has opened a sumptuously upscale, deeply gay-friendly, member’s club.

    And it’s crucially needed, because frankly, Soho was looking tired, tattered and – most shockingly – decayed, the worst crime imaginable for a hedonistic paradise. Like other endangered species, the floridly artistic, theatrical and merely eccentric citizens of London’s prized, premier Bohemia have been systemically disenfranchised.

    Not surprising. A scorched-earth policy of insensitive redevelopment has closed iconic venues and shut gloriously eccentric shops, junking the avant-garde for the averagely-grotesque. But mercifully, there’s still gorgeous life in Soho beyond chain stores on every corner. Without doubt, L’Escargot’s new member’s club heralds a quantum-leap, quality Renaissance for the entire area.
    It’s the staggeringly beautiful brainchild of two highly-esteemed bon vivants and lovers of the arts, Brian Chivas and Laurence Isaacson. Both have impeccable, cultural gourmet credentials, with Brian Chivas having run private member’s clubs Home House and Mayfair’s Arts Club, and Chez Gerard restauranteur Laurence Isaacson co-founding the Covent Garden Arts Festival. Together, their talents create an irresistible force for positive, cultural change, and they’re comprehensively addressing one inexplicably gaping hole – the lack of refined luxury for mature creatives – in Soho’s existing member’s clubs.

    Astonishingly, that issue’s never been addressed before, and most probably, stems from creative laziness. Too often, new venture planning assumes a below-40s demographic as a shaping aesthetic. The results, of course, are shockingly mediocre – a voluntary torture regime designer-cut for sociopaths. Jarring, over-loud music and harsh lighting discourage cosy quality time, and encourage rapid, uncomfortable but lucrative, member visits.

    But who wants such an empty, soul-destroying experience, especially if you’re a forty-something, gay creative wanting to unwind? Why endure bars, clubs and restaurants where pumping sound-systems drown even bellowed conversation? Mercifully, L’escargot embraces an entirely different philosophy – the soothing of the savaged, civilized soul.

    Fully appreciating that its’ members relish experiences beyond a crass battering of the senses, L’Escargot is the discrete, unarguable pearl of Soho’s artistic urban oyster. Set within the glorious of a 200-year old Georgian townhouse, even the slightest, first step across the threshold induces a psychological ‘Narnia Effect’ – the sense of extraordinary, hidden wonders.
    Is it really that impressive? In a word, yes. And in a beyond-bland world where corporate ‘adventurism’ spells fifty brands of beige, this is luxury run fabulously riot. Forget sterile atriums with the icy panache of dentist’s drills; L’Escargot is a four-storey, Faberge Easter egg of eclectic excellence.

    The multi-sensuous mystique begins with the first, frosted kiss of the restaurant’s cut-glass chandeliers downstairs. All warmly inviting, dark scarlet walls and pale oak floors, Art Deco classicism is married to an enviably French conviviality. Immediately, the space becomes a feast for the appreciative senses, the furthest point possible from globally-franchised minimalism.
    That’s barely the tip of a Crown Jewels iceberg. Step upstairs beyond the five-star cuisine and wine cellar, and you’re entranced by a jewel-box warren of six rooms on four floors. With each a uniquely themed highlight in a consistently opulent aesthetic, it’s tempting to draw comparisons with Prince Regent’s beautifully eccentric Brighton Pavilion and Hugh Walpole’s stunning, mock-Gothic mansion Strawberry Hill.

    Throughout, there’s a sheer, unrestrained joy in decor designed, in an almost Noel Coward sense, for the pleasure of enlightened living. Designed and executed by the formidable Russell Sage studio, whose clients include Quaglino’s and The Hospital Club, the decor fiercely rejects the English fear of vibrant colour and longing for Laura Ashley limpidity.
    Instead, quite triumphantly, there’s a hot-house fantasia of sensations, each richer than the last. A plushly-carpeted, spiral staircase leads to a startlingly elegant, lushly pale green and high-ceilinged dining-room, a delight of white linen and beveled wall mirrors. Turn again, and there’s a secluded library complete with fire, an erudite echo chamber to one’s own thoughts and those of others, and awash with Oscar Wilde associations of fine rococo book leather and mulled wine over fine cigars.

    And the jewels – like refugees from the otherworldly Arabian Nights – keep on coming. One brilliant royal blue room is offset by Romanesque gold-mosaic patterned accents, and another, imperial purple chamber boasts gleaming, gloss-black highlights like exotic, patent leather. The compact, all-crimson boudoir especially impresses, like a shimmering mirage of heated desire. And finally, there’s the matt-black, barrel-vaulted and brilliantly sky-lit upper Grand Siècle Salon, artfully set with studded, black leather Chesterfields, a baby grand piano and an en suite bar.
    Overall, it’s a superb, and much needed, reclamation of the art of intelligent Maximalism, as exemplified in the pop-art perfection of British artist and dandy Duggie Fields. Never cringingly retrospective or faux-nostalgic, this exuberant maximalism is a furiously effective antidote to an increasingly passé minimalism. In brief, it’s a life-style, art and philosophy cherishing the full richness of possibilities, in art, deportment and mind-sets.

    So no wonder that vision’s so dynamically realised here. Artworks by talents as diverse and challenging as Dali, Grayson Perry, Matisse and Alternative Miss World doyen Andrew Logan gild the walls as assured conversation pieces. In essence, the club’s become a deeply addictive space for urbane glamour, a bohemian kaleidoscope as equally suited to F.Scott Fitzgerald’s Lost Generation as to style gourmands David Hockney, Nancy Dell’Olio and Benedict Cumberbatch.And better yet, beyond its’ luxuriant, physical beauty and imminent roof terrace, L’escargot eagerly facilitates pocket music, theatre, arts and film night events. But unlike other grand, London spaces, where opulence is also icily formal, L’esgarcot prizes member friendliness as its’gold standard. ‘The most important thing is how they treat the receptionists and waiters’, co-founder Brian Chivas has said. ‘There have to be places people of my age (he’s an effortlessly charming 55) can go without all the madness that goes with youth culture’.He’s right. In an increasing fractious world swamped by youth culture attitudes, demands and tastes, any contemporary Oscar Wilde or mature epicurean would feel excluded. That’s no critique of youth, just acknowledging that we deepen and become increasingly nuanced in maturity, and gain appreciation of new pleasures never previously considered. They’re states of mind brilliantly evoked by flâneur, raconteur and debut author Phillip Mann, in his upcoming, cultural critique Dandies At Dusk (Flammarion Books, £40). It’s a title which succinctly applies to L’escargot’s inimitable, nurturing ambiance, and which makes it, unarguably, the soul of the new Renaissance Soho.
    REVIEW L’escargot Upstairs Private Members Club.

    48 Greek Street, Soho.

    5 Stars

  • Alexander McQueen; Meathead Maverick or Melancholy Martyr?

    ‘I’d rather people left my shows and vomited. I want extreme reactions. I want heart attacks. I want ambulances’ – Alexander McQueen.

    (more…)

  • REVIEW | Holly Penfield Sings Judy Garland

    ★★★★★ | Holly Penfield Sings Judy Garland

    Holly Penfield Sings Judy Garland Live At The Talk Of The Town 5 Stars! Legendary Lightning Strikes Again!

    Do tribute shows suck? Only if they’re X-factor auto-tune abortions, or clueless samplings of a legendary legacy. But this, my dears, is neither; Holly Penfield sings Judy Garland is grit, discipline and commitment from the bones up.

    That’s obvious even from the audience. It’s fifteen minutes to showtime, and already, the conversational buzz is fierce, seething white noise punctuated by clinking drinks. Where? The Talk Of The Town, darlings, now more prosaically renamed the Hippodrome. But oh yes, the old, theatrical magic still lingers, in the venue’s stellar show-room designed by incomparable theatre designer Frank Matcham. Listen close – or just imagine softly, if you can, and you’ll still catch the faint, psychic echoes of Judy Garland performing here in her matchless, 1960’s heydey. And tonight, another fiercely disciplined diva – Miss Holly Penfield – is about to offer her vocal riches to the looming spirit of her idol, Judy. And what unique vocal riches she has; a stone, white soul chick groove coloured by the joyous bounce of Dusty Springfield, the sensual growl of Janis Joplin, and the surgically dainty jazz chops of Dinah Shore.

    Still, it’s a daunting task, one not remotely suited to 8 shows a week, and twice on Sundays. No, this is a singular work of love and deeply grounded artistry, a sacrifice lesser talents would back horrified away from. Not Holly. A jazz and rock singing veteran of thousands of gigs, she’s defiantly preparing to walk the walk she talks, whatever the cost. Will she? Won’t she, pay the price? And now – right now – the verdict’s in.

    Soooo… what a superb, solo tribute to Judy Garland jazz diva Holly Penfield delivered at the London Hippodrome on March 28th.

    Bursting with chutzpah and aplomb, and simply on fire throughout, Holly’s pouting physicality and darkly gorgeous, smoked-honey vocals totally revitalised Judy’s trademark songbook for the 21st century.

    Sure, Rufus Wainwright attempted similar excellence a few years back – and vocally, it’s like trying to climb a sonic Mount Everest or act King Lear solo – but Rufus lacks both Holly’s magisterial stage presence and her ferocious joy in her own femininity. My God, she brings such passion to each song, it’s as if she’s giving live birth to Judy’s Tin Pan Alley offspring onstage!

    Simply astounding? Oh yes indeed; it’s vocal noir from moment one. Entering side-stage, all blue spangles, alabaster skin and killer, black Louise Brooks bob, she’s an exotic bouquet lushly unfurling for her audience, a simmering flower of sensuality. And more bewitchingly still, she’s literally poured Judy’s unmistakable physicality into every one of her long, willow-elegant limbs. As if startlingly blown up life-size, fresh and limber from the grave, there’s Judy’s haughty, shuffle-shouldered denial, and her wrenching, little-lost-film-star blown on amphetamines, plus that mischievously infectious ease that made fans feel Judy was serenading them straight from her living-room floor. It’s brilliant physical mimicry, a living, singing character study in each dimension worth naming. Having established a flawless, audience intimacy, no wonder Holly slips into trademark, Judy pants.

    Make no mistake; this is no dull, dead-on its-beat tribute show; Holly’s far too accomplished an artist for
    that, a Zeitgeist Queen surfing cultural waves faster than they can break.

    In common with Gaga, Daphne Guinness, Anna Calvi and other, mischievous mavericks, Holly reweaves the past with the present, the possible future and her own, startlingly original muse to make it thrillingly new. A sterling example? Playing one of her own, deeply personal songs a lá Judy, fusing new and old like a master beauty surgeon.

    Puzzled? Don’t be; mix, match, but scratch from the heart is today’s crucial beat from the street, the ability to tear sacred cows from their pedestals and petrol-bomb them in heartfelt, personal fire.

    And guess what? Holly’s been doing since birth! A more mature Gaga, more steeped in musicality than a Method-acting Mozart, she’s tirelessly fused art, life, love and wide-screen, solo theatricality into a style, a sheer presence, uniquely her own.

    It shows. Never, ever taking gigs for granted – especially this one – Holly treats every show as more than life and death, a Roman Arena test of competence. And serenading Judy – Holly’s personal idol – almost demands a sacrifice of spiritual blood. Accordingly, Holly gives everything she can possibly can to the packed, eager audience – she’s even changed her body shape to Judy style, in a savagely dedicated work regime.

    Has it paid off? Well tonight, better than stealing the Crown Jewels! Quentin Crisp once told me that Californian women stalk the streets like she-panthers, all fire and lethal elegance; and judged that way, Holly’s the Killer Queen of passionate pussies, an Eartha Kitt Catwoman let loose and frantic to play!

    Forget flawless recreation, or awed reverence at Judy’s often lonesome, foghorn legacy; Madame Penfield sinuously stalks, undulates, purrs and finally pounces on many of Judy’s treasured gems, licking vibrant, vocal blood from them like hunks of gorgeous, classic songbook meat.

    Crude? Indiscriminate? Not at all; instead, there’s a sublime understanding, a ghostly communiqúe that defies rational understanding and sets mass goosebumps rising. Undoubtedly, Holly feels it too;
    ‘Are you there, Judy?’, she husks, ‘It’s getting awful lonely up here…’

    Not for long; suddenly, it’s mass séance time as two blithe, Noel Coward spirit-sisters – Judy and Holly – seamlessly blend. Stunningly, Holly’s host-body – apparently channelling Judy direct from the Big Beyond – adds both singer’s unique brilliance to the mix.

    Instantly gaining Judy’s tornado lung-power, woodwind contralto and rich, plump-to-the-ear vowels, Holly intuitively soufflés Garland’s big guns with her own signature, inimitable, micro-shifts of emphasis, phrasing and emotional revelation. It’s no bulldozing, unsubtle pastiche, but an incredible, on-the-spot recreation of Garland’s classic songs as if newly sung that moment.

    Unbelievable? In any singer less assured and empathic than Holly, yes, but shockingly, even all-out showboats like ‘The Trolley Song’ gain an emotive, Juliet Greco intimacy Judy’s cavernous attack often missed. And add Holly’s precision-aimed micro-yearning to Judy’s great, aching love-songs – ‘The Man That Got Away’, ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’ etc – and overblown, lungs-to-the-gallery love becomes searing, Billie Holliday heartache. Oh, it’s not that Judy was insensitive to nuance, but Holly simply owns it, and bleeds it masterfully into Judy’s hallmark delivery.

    Better yet, buoyed on her soaring band of ecstatically erotic, blue to the bone drums, sax and keyboards, Miss Penfield tinges each of Judy’s torch songs with a throaty, glissading timbre, a longing for lost, Garland-style love that’s more piercing than Tennessee Wlliams’ tragedy queens combined. It’s that ability, that singular capacity to give herself not only body, blood and soul to every show, but musically and empathically too, that skyscrapers Holly’s tribute – and solo shows – to another level envied by less ferociously giving singers. Now, there’s an infamous quote that reads, ‘If you can’t be someone else, always be a first-rate version of yourself’.

    Holly live – and her adoring audiences – are living proof that she is exactly that. Go watch her and dream
    that every West End show could make you weep with joy.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Swingin’ At The Savoy With Holly Penfield

    For any first-timer- and even seasoned veterans – any arrival at the Savoy is as entrancing as entering some exotic, virtually endless, opium dream.

    With exquisite cheekbones kissed by pale neon, absinthe green, you’re instantly folded into the architectural arms of an Art Deco wonderland, and baptised by the liquid chandelier of the Savoy’s front-facing fountain into a life previously unimaginable.

    Forget the tawdry tat and tension of Central London; Here, virtually unchanged, is Oscar Wilde’s incomparable favourite hotel in town, an oasis of calm, civility and companionship.

    And the pearl of this perfect, urbane oyster? Undoubtedly, the jaw-dropping, newly-refurbished Beaufort Bar, a ground-floor extravaganza of ebony black and gleaming gold. Now yes, F.Scott Fitzgerald may have once imagined a diamond as big as the Ritz,
    but compared to this staggering elegance, his vision seems as cheap, everyday and pedestrian as counterfeit Chanel.

    Merely enter the Beaufort, greeted and often escorted by fin de siecle dandy and maitre’d Helios, the very model of suave panache, and you step inside an enormous, Fabergé’s egg of a room, a space worthy of the Romanoff’s Imperial Russian Court at its’ very peak.

    It’s astounding; a mirrored back wall reflects and doubles the sumptuous, gleaming gold starburst anoiting the central bar and performance space, and there’s an expectant aura of secular sanctity, so strong that one almost hesitates to shatter the spell by sitting down.

    Ah, but we’ve yet to taste the oyster’s oyster, the pearl beyond price of the Savoy’s hospitality – its’ justly famed, live performances, spearheaded by the Savoy’s recently reincarnated, darkly delicious cabaret, currently of a calibre that even Noël Coward would crawl to be part of.

    Now, in large part, that ecstatic, cabaret revival is due to the sterling efforts of show-stopping, San Franciscan jazz diva, Miss Holly Penfield. Currently residing in London, Holly can only be compatred to a Liza Minelli without the excesses and unpredictability, and with an enviable, sterling-silver reputation of always delivering miraculous, crowd-rousing shows at the peak of her game.

    And tonight – Holly’s Christmas Burlesque Fantasia- is no exception. Aiming to reconjure the snap-brimmed, Charleston-kicking heels and reckless, ultra-chic abandon of the Savoy’s original, 1920s cabaret, mysteriously absent until recently, Holly and her entourage burn hotter than limbo dancing and flaming Sambucca cocktails at midnight on the Champs Elyseé!

    It’s a spectacle virtually unparalled in modern London.

    Partnered by her regular co-host, Mr. Dusty Limits, a tall, debonair, Disneyesque Prince Charming with chiselled cheekbones and Fred Astaire frockcoat, Holly injects a simmering, tactile sense of film goddess glamour from her first moment of stage.

    It’s contagious; immediately, the audience’s energy levels sky-rocket to Empire State excitement.

    Wrapped and caressed – the word ‘dressed’ is just completely inadequate– in yards of shimmering, orange satin, crowned by her liquid honey bob, Holly’s voice makes gorgeous, virtual love to the audience. Her opening songs – ‘Let It Snow’ and ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ – impact with the exuberant joy of Christmas This Very Minute, her pure, caramel tone as effortless as a master saxophonist, a Charlie Parker beautifully clarified with vintage brandy.

    No wonder that, within seconds, the awe-struck audience is literally drunk with cookin’ conviviality. Effortlessly involving the crowd with a flirtatious banter and interaction of a finesse Judy Garland could only dream of, Holly selflessly gives her audience the finest gift a performer can – one hundred percent dedication. And more impressive still, she’s an absolute maestro, a stellar mistress of narrative phrasing, the wickedly difficult art of injecting love, loss and laissez-faire insouciance into lyrics that – with lesser talents – would sound as trite as fortune cookie frivolities.

    Yes, admittedly tonight, there’s a slight flurry of microphone problems, but the indomitable Miss Penfield – unlike singers crippled without Auto-Tune – is every bit as commanding, and arguably, even more beguiling – with her purely acoustic delivery.

    But if Holly’s indisputably the buzzing, electric glue that binds and lifts her cast into a devastating, ensemble whole, they each excel on their own terms.

    There’s the sultry, almost irresistable – to men, at least – Kitty Bang Bang, who redefines striptease into a work of scorching, choreographic eroticism, almost a Royal Ballerina reincarnating a chiffon-swathed Botticelli’s Venus, but all toned, modern muscles and Lady Gaga fierceness.

    Then there’s the extraordinary Duchess Of Crouch End, a mature drag-queen like no other, and distant cousin to Dame Edna, though lacking that worthy’s often leaden wit. Much closer in tone to acclaimed, music-hall and vaudeville performers Hinge and Brackett, Mrs.Shufflewick and Douglas Byng, she’s a meticulously-crafted character songstress, complete with ukelele, delivering wryly comic tales of once-privileged destitution with a vicious sting in her tale!

    With the brief sound problems resolved, the second half kicks like Frank Sinatra’s neat bourbon, as deathly-elegant David Bowie clone Dusty Limits simmers through ‘Mad About The Boy’, wringing every drop of steaming innuendo from some very willing men in the front row.

    Still panting, he’s joined by Holly for a rapturous, hell-for-leather duet on ‘Money’, from Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, with the audience simply superglued to their seats with pleasure.

    But then – with quite sudden, breath-taking audacity – show-mistress Holly orchestrates a complete, theatrical U-turn, with the thrillingly bizarre entrance of Craig Reed’s cross-dressed, hula-hoop swinging Oompa Loompa in Wizard Of Oz, ruby slippers. Gyrating faster and faster, hoops threatening to helicopter from his hips, they burst into glowing, multicoloured incandescence, a stunning coup de theatre perfectly synchronized to a thumpingly techno ‘Over The Rainbow’.

    By now, the cast are completely swamped by a simply non-stop love tsunami of Christmas cheer, only to be ramped up higher still by Holly’s final entrance.

    Sheathed snugger than a glove in tip-to-toe, Balenciaga black – including the signature, ebony bob of her ‘evil jazz twin’ alter ego – Holly unleashes a totally awe-inspiring take of her self-penned celebration of the Savoy itself, ‘Swinging At The Savoy’.

    It’s an utter revelation. Sung urgently, magnificently on the beat, it’s a kaleidoscopic, imaginary montage of Holly’s singing star predecessors at the Savoy, and a magical evocation of the Savoy’s enduring mystique.

    Utterly timeless and utterly contemporary, Holly’s liquid gold harmonies strike out and stake a unique, inimitable vocal territory between peak-era Lena Horne and Peggy Lee, and as enchanting as either. Propelled by a steaming beat that Holly’s perfectly married to her infectious, mischeivous lyrics, it’s a stratospheric display of sung brilliance that, inevitably- brings the house down in storming applause.

    So did we have myself a merry little christmas? Beyond doubt, but words simply cannot begin to do justice to the mystique Holly and her cast conjure in the uniquely symbiotic setting of the Savoy. Thanks to the support and encouragement of visionary mangers, the Savoy has continued to nurture a superlative artist and cast whose nights, justifiably, are considered the toast of London by true conneisseurs, and perfectly complement and enhance the Savoy’s über-chic, soigné mystique. Our advice? Book a room, dinner and Holly show ASAP; She’s the spirit of Judy Garland live and reincarnated in London, but better preserved – and more consistent – than late-career Judy ever was!

    Holly Penfield returns to the Savoy in March