Cabaret Chaos with Little Death Club
Cabaret chaos comes to London and has landed on the South Bank with an orgasmic splash.
The Underbelly Festival, which runs till September 29, has erected the Spiegeltent to host a crazy circus of daring acts in the suggestively named Little Death Club.
Lewd, lascivious and ludicrous, bright and brash, slick and sexy, the performers concoct a heady and hilarious mix of fire-eating, hair-hanging, aerial contortions, mime, song and satire.
Balletic aerial contortionist
Beau Sargent
Mistress of ceremonies Bernie Dieter, German-born of circus stock, stamps her authority on the evening’s entertainment, spearing her sequinned stiletto heels on chests of hapless, helpless audience victims as they fall prey to her deviant charms.
‘There’s no fourth wall, no rules, no seat is safe,’ warns director Tom Velvick.
His mission statement: ‘We wanted to create the ultimate modern kabarett club where all punks, freaks and weirdos can come out to play.’
Cabaret collides with vaudeville and original music to showcase: Kitty Bang Bang, a bearded lady (the beard is not where you’d expect) who doubles as a whisky-soaked flame-thrower setting her nipples on fire; Beau Sargent, a balletic aerial contortionist who makes my yoga positions look tame; Fancy Chance, a gossamer-winged hair-hanger (ouch); Myra Dubois, Rotherham’s answer to Dame Edna Everage crossed with Elaine Paige, seduces us with I Know Him So Well. Song writer Tim Rice declared her rendition ‘definitive.’
Of all the acts that tickled my fancy, morose mime artist Josh Glanc, sozzled on red wine, hit my sad/funny bone.
‘I have been Le Mime Tipi for 23 years,’ laments the Aussie comedian with fake French accent. ‘No box, no rope, nobody to fall in love with. It’s all bullshit.’
He and his comedy cohorts, who channel the gender-bending sexual freedom against a backdrop of the Weimar Republic’s political turmoil, encourage us to celebrate difference in the Little Death Club.
You won’t get a refund if you fail to climax. But you’ll laugh all the way to the bar at this bawdy burlesque.
