We had another wonderful evening courtesy of Paul Burston's "peerless gay literary salon" Polari last night. In yet another new venue, the lovely Weston Pavilion on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall with its views of Parliament and the London Eye, the scene was set for a very cutural evening. We weren't disappointed!
Our opening reader was a superb new talent, the "performance poet" Keith Jarrett (not to be confused with the jazz pianist), whose reading took us on an author's journey through a series of conjectural scenarios, characters and relationships that could be part of a fictional work about gay life, ending with the audience being told
"this is not my story, it is everyone's. You decide." Difficult to explain in print, but excellent in its effect...
Paul, wearing green in honour of St Paddy's Day - with trousers so tight I had to let him know that we could tell he wasn't Jewish! - read a passage from
The Gay Divorcee in which the relief of a Welsh Mam on finding out that her gay son was (unexpectedly) getting married (to a girl!) was brilliantly evoked.
But after the break we had the real treats of the evening! Marcus Reeves is a walking art-form - singer, writer, performer and creator of the fantabulosa
Postcards from God - The Sister Wendy Musical (which we so enjoyed back in 2007). He sang a couple of his beautiful songs and read a truly wonderful piece on the subject of love surviving through an abusive relationship. Little Tony was quite stunned when he walked over and sang one of his more emotional songs to him, clasping his hand in the process.
Heart-warming and stunning in turns, Mr Reeves also happens to be a lovely man and a close friend of our Polari pal Celine, and we spent the rest of the evening in their company.
Last and most certainly not least was the star reader of the evening, the award-winning novelist Mr Jake Arnott. Jake read a couple of passages from his new novel
The Devil's Paintbrush, a complicated fantasy about the (imagined?) relationship between the disgraced Victorian Major-General Hector McDonald (who in real life was court-martialled for sodomy with Indian boys at the height of the British Raj) and the infamous aesthete, mystic, alchemist and Satanist Aleister Crowley. My favourite was an early encounter between Crowley (aka "The Beast") and his future lover, the collector and and female impersonator Jerome Pollitt:
"Alchemical elements are sexual: sulphur is male, salt is female."
"Fancy that."
They can create a transcendent union with philosophical mercury."
"Mercury?"
"Mercury if the spirit of flux."
"It's the only treatment for syphilis, darling. Nasty though. Turned Oscar's teeth quite black."
"It's a hermaphrodite element."
"Well, I know all about that, dear."
"Do you take anything seriously?"
"Oh yes," Pollitt replied, sonorously.
"My performance," he went on.
"You were very good..." Crowley offered.
"Just my little sacrificial burlesque..."
It seems that Mr Arnott can seamlessly combine campness of the highest order with what may turn out to be quite an intellectual read. We of course purchased copies, which he kindly signed.
Ending on a high note with a couple of songs from Celine (who has just landed a recording deal, and is heavily involved in researching her forthcoming East End musical), the evening came to a logical close. But not for us! Madame Acarti, Little Tony, Celine, John-John, Marcus and I trolled off to the Retro Bar for a few more bevvies, then ended the evening (very late) at the Players Theatre Piano Bar again...
Here, for your delectation, is a video offering from the lovely Marcus...
Yet another splendiferous evening, and I look forward to the next one on 14 April!
Polari on MySpace
