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Tag: Leicester Square Theatre

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Musik: The Billie Trix Story

    THEATRE REVIEW | Musik: The Billie Trix Story

    Artsbitching

    By

    Fraulein Sasha Selavie

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    DIVA OF MASS DISTRACTION

    ©The Other Richard

    By Jonathan Harvey and Pet Shop Boys

    When was Billie Trix – the fictional Diva of Divine Degradation – first unleashed in public? Why, 9/11/01 of course, the purrfect date of birth for a one-woman assault on all known taste! How could I possibly forget? Furiously pumped by the blistering, raw nasal ecstasy of prime, Cordon Bleu coke, I had no idea that evening’s Closer to Heaven press night – Billie’s media premiere – would soon expose me to the sizzling incandescence of the then-unknown and uncrowned Queen of Cunt Rock!

    Was I up for it? Oh Christ, yes – I’d just spent an outrageously erotic, Rocky Horror night with my then-partner, and utterly fucked from drugs, sexual excess and a huge plate of restorative pasta, I crashed comatose for hours. Bad move – I woke to 71 missed voice messages screeching World War Three was game on, was happening, the World Trade Centre and Pentagon both savaged by kamikaze terrorists.

    An ultimate wake-up call? For sure – nothing grabs your attention faster than indiscriminate, random slaughter in globally-famous landmarks! Still, press nights wait for no-one – neither queen nor transdiva – so Billie Trix’s first, ferocious draft scorched our spectacularly heightened senses with a contact high worthy of Dietrich screwing Madonna!

    Sure, public decorum cancelled the scheduled after-party, but not the impromptu shag-a-thon spontaneously erupting at the Shadow Lounge, all blatant public sex and delirium; Frankly, there’s nothing like terrorist death-threats to kick-start libidos and make Viagra instantly redundant!

    So, can lightning strike twice? Never doubt it! Even in Closer To Heaven, Billie’s role screamed out for total exposure – the more warts, pudenda and used condoms the better – and, with Musik, authored by Jonathan Harvey and sound-tracked by the Pet Shop Boys, Billie finally has a solo showcase capable of killing her talent-free rivals on sight!

    Musik, authored by Jonathan Harvey and sound-tracked by the Pet Shop Boys, Billie finally has a solo showcase capable of killing her talent-free rivals on sight!

    Billie’s back-story? Simple – she’s an every day, utterly amoral, drug-fucked hedonist, like all unrepentant media whores; hello Michael Jackson and my darling, Catholic Pope, allegedly shockingly high on snorted Saints’ ashes! But while lazy – and unimaginative – critics cite Marianne Faithfull as Billie’s role model par excellence, she’s arguably far closer in spirit to Wendy O.Williams, deranged frontwoman of hardcore punk band the Plasmatics. And Wendy’s finest, must-read media moment? Nothing less than attempting suicide trying to hammer a kitchen knife through her sternum!

    Okay, maybe Billie’s not quite that extreme, but as played by the uber-Botticellian Frances Barber reprising her iconic role, Billie instantly electrifies every susceptible cock in sight! And an appropriate air of depravity is set by the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sister Ray’, fiercely chugging away pre-show in the auditorium. Pin-sharp perfect mood music, it’s a 17(!)-minute epic of smacked-up, tranny junkies projectile puking all over their appalled johns, as they come en masse in showers of rancid spunk!

    Arguably, ‘Sister Ray’ is Billie’s signature song as much as Dietrich’s ‘Falling in Love Again’, and sets our expectations sky-high. We’re not disappointed; Heart-stoppingly offensive, Billie takes no prisoners, dead, alive or in between, like a glorious, fetish-culture Joan Rivers on Crystal Meth! And gay author Jonathan Harvey pulls no punches, ramping the Amy Winehouse Bible of Pure Excess to scarcely believable, Trailer Trash on Steroids tastelessness!

    Structured as a flashback memoir of Billie’s fantastically view-worthy highs – and lows – the only downside of Musik, ironically, is the Pet Shop Boys’ dreary, pompous and hollow synth-pop, and the six, stunningly banal songs – absolute masterpieces of vacuity – that punctuate the show. Cringingly, Warhol’s feted by this lyrical messterpiece; ‘Soup…won’t let you droop’, after which my mind – and pen – refused to transcribe the subsequent drivel.

    Still – thank my Holy, Bleeding Jesus – there’s still Barber’s ferociously meaty, dramatic attack to relish. Briefly, Billie name-checks the famous – and infamous – she’s shared genitalia, and, more interestingly, repartee with, from Jackson Pollack, Trump to Prince Harry, and it’s here the one-liners come thick, fast and awesomely offensive.

    A word of warning; dump any snowflake bigotry – and faux-sensitivity – right NOW; Jonathan Harvey’s wit is brutally eloquent. So, are you firmly strapped in? Then we’ll take a ride on the All About Eve ghost-train…“Trump’s penis?’ Billie hisses, ‘it’s shaped like a walnut whip!”, and that Lou Reed compared her clitoris to a perfect, triple bass clef’.

    On a roll now, she screams she’s “such a perfectionist – I produce at least ONE note a week!’. But occasionally, even Billie needs Autotune; ‘Your voice would sound this rough if you’d sucked as many lying cocks as I have!’. Still, she’s a model of sobriety – “I haven’t touched smack since my first rehearsal this morning!’ but even so, Billie simply can’t stand Madonna; ‘That plagiarising Bitch! She copies everything!’ Now. that insult takes ferocious balls, with Madge literally playing London’s Palladium just streets away!

    More hot, feisty and fearless than tranny hookers shagging football thugs, Francis Barber’s Billie Trix is simply a revelation in Musik. Think Killing Eve’s Villanelle with added singing chops and utterly insouciant, jaded attitude, and you have diva Bille Trix, the absolute, Reigning Queen of killer, kitsch cabaret! So why waste time streaming porn or Game of Thrones? The real Dragon Queen – Billie Trix – is gloriously spreading her wings right now in Soho!

    Book tickets now To March 1st. Leicester Square Theatre 0207-734-222.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Muzik, London

    THEATRE REVIEW | Muzik, London

    ★★★★★ | Muzik, Leicester Square Theatre, London

    It takes someone with a lot of talent, energy, charisma and pizzaz to keep you mesmerised, enthralled, entertained and laughing non-stop in a one hour show. Frances Barber does just this playing Billie Trix in the show ‘Muzik.’

    Barber is, in a word, brilliant in her one woman show where she recounts the life, and acting as, Billie Trix, who was an icon, rock star, screen goddess, and drug addict.

    In a show written by Jonathan Harvey and with songs by the Pet Shop Boys, Barber (Trix) tells of her life when she belonged to the Warhol crew (there is a funny joke about a gun and Valerie Solanas – the woman who shot Warhol), to her time in Paris, and how her and her mother never saw eye to eye. The jokes are fast and furious and hilarious. Barber keeps the momentum going singing the hilarious songs about anything and nothing. No stone is left unturned when she, truth or not, recounts the time when she was Donald Trumps lover and how she could’ve been the princess to Prince Harry.

    This one hour show is jam packed with her stories; Madonna is in disguise in the audience, and her agent, also in the audience, is happily eating away. If you get a chance go see this show. I knew nothing about Trix, and Barber until now – Barber made me laugh until I cried.

    MUSIK
    Written by Jonathan Harvey
    & Pet Shop Boys

    Leicester Square Theatre
    6 Leicester Place
    London WC2H 7BX

    Wednesday 5 February – Sunday 1 March

    Tues-Thurs £22.50, £34.50 & Premiums £42.50
    Fri-Sat £22.50, £42.50 & Premiums £49.50
    Sun £22.50, £37.50 & Premiums £45.00
    These prices are inclusive of all booking fees and theatre levy

    Ticket Booking Line
    0207 7342222

    www.leicestersquaretheatre.com

  • REVIEW: Audra McDonald at the Leicester Square Theatre

    ★★★★★ | Audra McDonald

    Megastar of Broadway, film and television Audra McDonald can barely pop out for a carton of milk in New York without winning another Tony Award. It’s not hard to see why she’s a record breaking award winner and it’s a privilege to see and hear her up close in the Leicester Square Theatre.

    Due to break her West End virginity in June with her acclaimed performance as Billie Holiday with ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill’, Audra’s in town for a flying visit with her husband and kids and decided to pop into the theatre, have a chat and sing a few songs. On one level it feels like just that, a lovely friend has popped in for coffee and a gossip but on the other it’s slick and showy, crank the drama up to maximum and let the hairs on the back of the neck rise.

    Audra is interviewed and accompanied on the piano by the hilarious and camp musical theatre legend Seth Rudetsky as well as being joined by her Broadway hunk husband Will Swenson. There’s a genuine warmth between Audra and Seth as they chat on the sofa about the kind of diverse subjects we all gossip about such as childrearing, travel and working with P-Diddy.

    Oh, she’s met a few legends too and gives good Barbra and Liza anecdotes. She seems to be that rare entity: genuinely nice but interesting with it. In between chats she sings. Boy does she sing. Last night she ran through Sondheim, Lerner and Loewe and Gershwin, amongst others but who knows what you’ll get if you’re lucky enough to get a seat.

    She really does have a beautiful voice and it’s not hard to see what all the fuss is about. If you love musical theatre then this is an absolute must. Even if you don’t love musical theatre then go. If this doesn’t convert you then nothing will.

    Audra McDonald plays at The Leicester Square Theatre until 15th April 2017

  • THEATRE REVIEW: Pam Ann Queen Of The Skies, Leicester Square Theatre

    She’s still got it. Forty-Six she reminds us, and still has lots of wear left in those knees. ★★★★

    And as those noisy punters she had removed from the front row will attest, as feisty as ever. Pam Ann is the unchallenged Queen of the skies and looking around at the packed Leicester Square theatre – queen of the gays as well – with every c*ck joke, every rim job mention provoking whoops of excitement that explode across the small auditorium.

    It’s not hard to understand why the gays have taken Pam under their collective wing for nearly 20 years, in an interview with this very magazine in 2013 she said about the gay community,

    “They didn’t create Pam Ann; they created my whole fking life and my existence. That’s why I have not got married. I have not had kids. I am a fking gay man, 99 per cent of my friends are gay so they can take responsibility for everything. My vocabulary is gay, I speak gay, everything is gay. I f**k like a gay so you know, I say they created my whole existence and Pam Ann.”

    There’s something different though with Pam Ann, perhaps a little more self-aware than her usual, it feels a little Pam Ann 2.0. In this show there’s a lot less “air” jokes and hardly any of her beloved characters, such as Lily, Valerie and Helga. The first part gives way to a full on stand up routine and while much is in the character, Caroline Reid (Pam Ann’s creator and body) is it seems, breaking and aching to get out.

    Don’t get me wrong; she still gets in the ‘ass-like-a-hippo’s-yawn’ gag (it was at 3 minutes and 42 seconds, but who’s counting) and she still flies in the headwind of the PC brigade, using race, religion, heterosexuals and class as her bread and butter material, much to the applause of the crowd.

    While some media outlets will call her shtick out-dated and a product of days past, our community needs levity and moment to stop eating itself from the inside and listen to some of the pearls that fall from Reid’s mouth – and she knows that. With a knowing eye she momentarily tips her hat off to one particuarly hotly contested word – to the delight of the audience.

    But what if Pam wasn’t Pam anymore? Instead we have Caroline… I’m excited about the prospect; does she need to be dressed up in the uniform to still be hailed high as one of the campest comic creations by the gay community? The question is will we let her flamboyant, coked up stewardess character go? Will we let Reid fly, shed the wingtips and become a fully-fledged real person rather than the institution she’s become?

    Pam Ann Queen of The Skies is on at the Leicester Square Theatre until November 30th.

     

  • REVIEW | Supreme Fabulettes At Leicester Square 2015

    Wigs at the ready, the Supreme Fabulettes are back…

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  • THEATRE REVIEW | Epstein – The Man Who Made The Beatles

    ★★★★ | Epstein – The Man Who Made The Beatles

    Brian Epstein was, as the title suggests, the man who made the Beatles. After seeing them play a lunchtime gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1961, he persuaded them to let him act as their manager (in spite of no previous experience in this role) and helped find them the record deal that would shoot them to stardom.

    In spite of his pivotal role in changing the face of British music he was often overlooked and missed out on recognition and credit for his behind the scenes influence.

    Jewish, gay in a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence and experiencing an early death aged 32 from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; what more do we know about Brian’s life? Andrew Sherlock’s well written two-hander delves into the psyche of Epstein by imagining a night just before his death where he brings back a young man (known only as This Boy) to his swanky Belgravia apartment. The writing is tight and witty and cranks up dramatic tension, let down only slightly by the overuse of puns relating to The Beatles and the odd cheesy line and too knowing comment about the sixties. There’s plenty of absurdity in Epstein’s preening and posturing and his fragile vanity but also pathos as he reveals himself as a man who has spent his life fighting his own corner in a bullying and disapproving world for a young Jewish gay man.

    Andrew Lancel (Coronation Street, The Bill) is excellent as Epstein, even managing to look spookily like the man himself. He portrays him with skill as a well-nuanced character with endearing vulnerabilities as well as touches of monstrosity and simpering pomposity. He inhabits the stage, a convincing and versatile sixties interior, with a real presence and is entirely believable. Lancel is clearly an experienced actor at the peak of his powers and is a sight well worth seeing. Newcomer Will Finlason, as This Boy, is also extremely talented and his character acts as part narrator and partly as an excellent foil that illuminates the character of Epstein.

    The set is perfect with stylish back projections and gorgeously stylish animations that work really well to enhance the piece and create period style. The beautifully restored underground gem of the Leicester Square Theatre is an ideal venue for the show as it was dubbed the Cavern in the Town back in the 1960s due to its hosting of music acts. It’s got air conditioning too if you need to escape an oppressively hot evening for a few hours too.
    This isn’t a perfect play but it’s a good play and well worth seeing for an entertaining couple of hours.
    The play runs until the 6th of September 2014
    Buy tickets here: http://epsteintheplay.com

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Dick Comes Again

    ★★★ Once again, Leicester Square Theatre has provided an outrageously camp panto that hovers on just the right side of obscenity.

    Dick (Dave Bibby) and his trusty but drunk sidekick, Dave the Cat (Nick Read), agree to help Alice Fitznicely (Laura Hyde) sail the Leaky Vessel up Streaky Crack to find her family jewels and the key to her chas-titty belt. They are aided and hindered along the way by Sofonda Cox (Soho legend, The Very Miss Dusty ‘O’), Queen Runt (Paula Masterton) and Fairy Bell-End (Laura Curnick).

    With a few of last year’s jokes re-used, this production could, perhaps, have benefitted from some more original material, but it’s a small complaint. The old jokes are still relevant and the new ones manage to shock and delight in equal measure – there were a few audible gasps from the middle-aged ladies sat in front of me who shrieked and squealed throughout the evening.

    The innuendos come thick and fast in almost every line of Stuart Saint’s script with moments of genuine hilarity. Plenty of twerking and some superb performances from the very colourful cast further enhance the deliciously filthy pantomime atmosphere.

    The best laughs of the night, for this critic anyway, come from Dave the Cat, a drunk sexed-up version of Puss from Shrek (complete with dodgy Spanish accent). Nick Read performs his role brilliantly and shines through an already bright cast. Laura Hyde’s Alice is another particularly splendid performance, playing the role in the time-honoured over-the-top panto manner.

    Golden showers, S&M, Asian ladyboys and even a 14” dildo complete the ingredients for this fun Soho night out with plenty of suitably cringe-worthy audience participation.

    DICK! COMES AGAIN: BIGGER, LONGER, HARDER! plays at the Leicester Square Theatre until 19 January.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Desperately Seeking The Exit, Leicester Square Theatre

    How do you turn one of the West End’s biggest flops into a success? Turn its story into a 70 minute hilarious monologue, of course! And that is exactly what writer Peter Michael Marino has bravely done here.

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  • Supreme Fabulettes Announce 8 West End Shows

    The Supreme Fabulettes, London’s acclaimed all-male female close harmony vocal group, are marking the release of their new single, A Drag Queen is a Cowboy’s Best Friend, written by and video directed by Boy George, with eight West End shows.

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  • THEATRE REVIEW | Austentatious

    Following a critically acclaimed run at the Laughing Horse Free Fringe in Edinburgh this year, the verbosely talented cast of the Milk Monitors begin their residency at the Leicester Square Theatre.

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