To The Brunswick, for a comedy cabaret with some lovely friends I’ve made via Kat and The Lantern Theatre.
I hadn’t planned to go, as I had some admin to sort before a weekend away, and the lineup wasn’t to my tastes. The plan was a quick meet and chat and then to leave the others to it, so quite naturally come 7:30pm I was paying for a ticket on the door and blagging tables for our group on the second row.
There was also an element of professional curiosity. My own This Machine Kills Wasps night is also a cabaret of sorts. I thought I was inventing an incredible new thing with my idea of comedy AND music on the same bill, but it turns out there’s a name and a tradition for that already.
Next, I’ll get cracking on my plan to invent a kind of round thing that makes moving shit around easier.
The night was hosted by a time-travelling medium from the 1930s – a very funny conceit, in theory, but the host didn’t do much with it, other than an occasional attempt to remember to be confused by modern things.
The main thing a cabaret allows you is to pretend that if something isn’t funny, it wasn’t supposed to be – don’t you know that what just happened was performance art, darling?
Acts within the comedy/not comedy Schrödinger’s Box were cats like Kate Lous-Elliot, by turns singing and doing a Ted Talk about tradwives; SJ Wyatt, doing something between cosplay and therapy; and Stephen Canning, an affable presence but not someone attempting anything recognisably like stand-up or character comedy.
Jonathan Rudge, a polished and fairly trad stand-up from London, seemed if anything confused to be there, remarking, someone cruelly: “I thought this lineup was booked by the make a wish foundation”.
His set was interrupted by a drunk heckler, who the door person should have been quicker to eject. The guy came in, sort of swayed about, interrupted the tech person at the back of the room, and then announced AS A HECKLE that he didn’t have a ticket.
Mercifully, he left of his own accord at the interval.
The second half featured Donna Williams, who takes the snowplough approach to comedy: she does exactly the same set, at the same pace, and doesn’t seem to notice if people laugh or not. It’s joke dense, but it doesn’t seem very enjoyable to do or to experience.
There were two acts I enjoyed. The first was “boylesque” from CJ Cabaret, lip-synching his way through an honest, vulnerable, and high-energy set about the pitfalls and pratfalls that come with coming out later in life.
Acts like Frankie Thompson and Brighton’s own Beaverhausen have elevated lip-sync comedy up to genuine art, and CJ has a way to go to nail the physical comedy alongside the dance routines. But it’s a yes from me.
Talking of lip-syncing, Donna Williams was also on the bill, a comic who could maybe do with writing some new material. it’s a joke-dense set, but she’s been doing the same 10 spot for so long, some in the audience could mouth along verbatim. She could also do with being more aware of the audience’s reaction – several laughs were trodden on as she snowplowed her way to the next observation about lesbian culture.
My favourite act of the night was the final one – the first genuinely musical act of the night, and thus justifying the “cabaret” monicker.
This was Marianna Harlotta and Vladimir Chestikov (geddit?), a diva/violinist duo performing enjoyably po-faced pop-classic covers of pop and rock classics like Motörhead’s Ace of Spades and Britney’s Toxic.
Harlotta stayed in character throughout, bemusing the actual Russian to my left with her cod-eastern-European accent.
She was a lot of fun, wearing a preposterous hat and clearly not one to suffer fools gladly.
Fools like me, who sang along a little too enthusiastically to Toxic. Harlotta stopped the song and treated me like a naughty schoolboy, demanding to know whether she should continue or maybe I should go up and sing it instead if I was so clever?
It was delightful to be deservedly picked on, absolutely befitting of the character and adding ballast to the world. None dared sing too loudly again, ans the rest of the set was thoroughly enjoyable.
I bought Harlotta a drink (a tequila!) at the bar afterwards, and thanked her for the set, which reached a night that otherwise felt frequently on the verge of collapse. There were also a couple of other people I know from various words in attendance – Sarah, from shows at The Yellow Book, and Rachel, who I know from folk choir, and who, during the interval, said the funniest thing of the night
Me (to her friends): “I can’t believe Rachel hasnt told you about her folk choir! She must be ashamed of us.”
Rachel: “They know I’m in several Morris Dancing groups, I’m beyond embarrassment at this point.”
jamesofwalsh 
Leave a comment