All about Eve (and Andy!)

Peter York, Sue Tilley, Rusty Egan, Andrew Logan - more often than not such names, either alone or in combination, are the sort that crop up in some nostalgic Sunday supplement piece about "Shapers of the 80s". Yet there they all were in their finery in Soho's Arts Theatre, in 2014 (on Monday, actually) - assembled to pay homage to the doyenne of madcap camp cabaret and peignoir glamour, Miss Eve Ferret!

As my regular reader will no doubt be aware, Miss Ferret (solo, and in her original incarnation as part of "Biddie and Eve", in-house cabaret artistes at Steve Strange's seminal "Blitz" club) is a house favourite (and budding Patron Saint) here at Dolores Delargo Towers. Monday's show was the fourth time I had been to see her on stage...

Last year, the occasions were ably assisted by Celia Imrie/Fidelis Morgan, and by Adele Anderson/Hazel O'Connor.



This time, however (and Eve could hardly contain her excitement; nor could we), it was the turn of the ever-lovely Andy Bell (of Erasure) to occupy the guest slot! A fantastic choice for the launch night of Eve's first CD, Doolally (and for her forthcoming "Don't Be So Shellfish" tour). And a brilliant (and hilarious) show it was, too.

Miss Ferret - eclectic as ever - treated us to a whole raft of her own songs from the album, including favourites such as Diva's Tea Party, Handbag Girl and (I am the) Diva and previously unheard ones such as Twisted Sense of Glamour and (the rather wonderful) Cheers My Dears, alongside a clutch of bizarre oddities including This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us (Sparks), a medley of reggae songs with filthy lyrics (Push it In, Wet Dream and the like), Scars (Fran Landesman), The Model (Kraftwerk), Rapper's Delight (Sugarhill Gang) and of course her grand finale number Crazy Horses (The Osmonds)!



Here she is in a rather well-compiled video from her previous season of shows. It's Jezebel!

Eve Ferret with Roddy Matthews - Jezebel

Andy Bell - even without Vince and with just a backing tape - still retains the ability to send shivers down the spine with his magnificently powerful voice.



His own solo numbers were simply superb - including his hit Electric Blue, a rousing sing-along version of Erasure's classic Respect, and this this, his new single with maestro DJ Dave Aude:

Dave Aude feat. Andy Bell - Aftermath - Here We Go

But the best moment - the very best - was when Andy and Eve (once she'd stopped twirling her wand behind him) took to the mikes together, to perform a wonderful duet on the Gershwins' finest torch song The Man I Love. The audience (for a moment anyhow) was completely hushed...

Eve Ferret deserves to be far more widely recognised. She is one of the warmest, funniest and most creative cabaret artistes (and indeed singers) I have had the pleasure of going to see - two hours just flew by!

As the lady herself said in a recent interview: “I like to think when I’m performing we’re all in the party together and I’m just at the helm.”

Aye, aye, Cap'n!

Facts about Eve:

• Her uncle Pierre “Baro” Ferret played gypsy jazz with Django Reinhardt in the Hot Club de France.
• She appeared in Absolute Beginners alongside David Bowie, and was also in the great man's Jazzin' For Blue Jean video.
• Among the players in Biddie and Eve's band at The Blitz (apart from Roddy Matthews, who patiently accompanies Eve to this day) were Rowland Rivron, jazz pianist Simon Wallace and (latterly opera director) Richard Jones.
• The duo were the support act for a number of New Romantic and Goth bands in the 80s, including Theatre of Hate, Blancmange and Duran Duran.

Eve Ferret website

Andy Bell website

The Arts Theatre

More fabulous Ferreting

"They were looking for singers in the style of George Formby or Vera Lynn. I was a bit more like George."

We know a good night out when we find one here at Dolores Delargo Towers. And so it came to pass, a mere week after laughing our tits off at last week's Ferret Up The Arts show (with the eponymous Eve Ferret and her guests Celia Imrie, Fidelis Morgan and Mzz Kimberley) that Paul and I (and little Tony and Wayne) trolled into town again for another helping!

We adore Eve. She is our favourite "Blitz Kid". (And there was a smattering of true originals from that heady early-80s era again in evidence in the audience)

Once more we hooted at Miss Ferret's hilarious self-deprecation and patter, her pride in her peignoir, and the carefully-nurtured chaos that is her brilliant cabaret - everything from Crazy Horses and This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us to the catchiest-of-catchy "signature tunes" I Am The Diva and Diva's Tea Party, with Billie Holiday-esque vocals here and a bit of Piaf there for good measure...

Her guests this time around were again typically eclectic - and first up was the (very nervous) Vauxhall Tavern stalwart, Mr Alp Haydar. A singularly sexy man, he has a lovely singing voice, and Miss Ferret evidently adores him (even though he appeared somewhat out of his depth in the spotlight glare of a West End audience).



Speaking of adored... Our second guest Miss Adele Anderson has a very special place in our hearts indeed. Candid these days about her transition from the boy Eve knew decades ago to being a long-serving member of our favourite all-girl cabaret group Fascinating Aïda, Ms Anderson specialises in singing the kind of subtly acerbic torch songs we love, such as these:

Adèle Anderson - Pigalle

Adèle Anderson - My Voice

Adèle Anderson - Why Try to Change Me Now?

Having captivated the audience with her divine presence, Adele was rejoined by Eve and the two ladies did a killer version of Eartha Kitt's I Want To Be Evil, which was utterly brilliant. Once we reached the break, we were buzzing (as was everyone else outside having a fag). But lawks-a-mercy, there was a magnificent treat in store in part two...

For alongside Eve's own miscellany of musical delights, she proudly introduced the last of her trinity of talents to the stage - none other than the legendary Miss Hazel O'Connor!

Miss O'Connor, together with such post-punk-popstrels as Toyah, Adam Ant, Lene Lovich and others of that ilk, experienced a meteoric rise to chart stardom in the early 80s (at around the same time that Biddie and Eve were witnessing the parallel ascendancy of the electro-tinged New Romantics) but unlike such survivors as Siouxsie or Nina Hagen, her time at the top was relatively short-lived. Nevertheless, her unique brand of impassioned theatricality has left a lasting influence on all our lives (we who were there at the time, that is), and I genuinely never, ever thought I would get to see her live.



Her voice - never hugely powerful even in her heyday - has obviously mellowed a lot nowadays, but she has cleverly adapted her smoky register to a more jazzy, bluesy sound (almost in the manner of the Goddess Marianne Faithfull), and her rendition of God Bless The Child was sublime.

But it was when she sang her absolute classic Will You that the shivers really travelled up and down my spine (even when Miss Ferret appeared at the back of the stage "artistically" twirling her fluorescent streamer!). One of the most poignant ballads of its age - if not of all time - I was immediately transported back to an era when (as now) I could mouth every single word and nuance, and it was all so incredibly meaningful...

Hazel O'Connor - Will You

You drink your coffee,
I sip my tea,
And we're sitting here, playing so cool,
Thinking, 'What will be, will be.'

And it's getting kind of late now,
Oh, I wonder if you'll stay now,
Stay now, stay now, stay now,
Or will you just politely say 'Goodnight'?

I move a little closer to you,
Not knowing quite what to do and I'm
Feeling all fingers and thumbs,
I spill my tea, oh silly me.

It's getting kind of late now,
I wonder if you'll stay now,
Stay now, stay now, stay now,
Or will you just politely say 'Goodnight'?

And then we touch, much too much,
This moment has been waiting for a long, long time,
Makes me shiver,
Makes me quiver,
This moment I am so unsure,
This moment I have waited for,
Well is it something you've been waiting for,
Waiting for too?

Take off your eyes,
Bare your soul,
Gather me to you and make me whole,
Tell me your secrets,
Sing me the song,
Sing it to me in the silent tongue.

It's getting kind of late now,
I wonder if you'll stay now,
Stay now, stay now, stay now,
Or will you just politely say 'Goodnight'?

One of my favourite songs, ever. As it appeared to be for most of the audience, as the great lady had people on their feet cheering as she left the stage, and left Eve to carry on the show - gin shots, flying mangetout, hobby horses, drums, nylon frou-frou and all...



An unmissable experience! We thanked Miss F for her magnificence, and chatted briefly with Ms A and Mr H after the show. Unfortunately Miss O'C had left the building, leaving only pre-signed CDs in her wake. Which was a shame. We wanted just to bathe in the hallowed glow of such an icon.

Remarkable.

The amazing bouncing Ferret

Described succinctly by one reviewer as "poet, philosopher, peignoir model, puppeteer and trainee crowd surfer", Miss Eve Ferret is a firm favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers. And her new show A Ferret Up The Arts (that Paul and I went to see last night) is fucking hilarious, to boot!

From her riotous opening number complete with marching drum, through her trademark meandering repartee of anecdotes and jokes (often at the expense of her long-suffering guitar accompanist Roddy Matthews), through her paean to the aforementioned peignoir (a long frilled nylon nightie - "closed, it's Rita Hayworth, open, it's Elsie Tanner!") to her seemingly endless supply of props (at one point, singing in French, she peppered us with mangetout, the next, fake money) not to mention her crowd-surfing Ferret doll, she was unstoppable.

The divine Miss F is not just a clever knock-about performer however, she can actually sing - and beautifully - when she wants to. She has been compared to both Barbara Dickson and Diana Krall in the past, and when she gets her teeth into a number her voice has the power to send chills down the spine.

She certainly had the audience in rapt awe at her version of Scars (a song written by Fran Landesman, whose Ballad of the Sad Young Men is a gay classic). Over the course of the evening she tried her hand at just about everything from Rappers' Delight to the blues, singing a blend of covers and her own material - Handbag Girl was a particular joy - and at every musical turn we were thrilled.



Of course the biggest thrill of all was Miss Ferret's promised "messing about with my chums" bit, as she introduced the first of her special guests, the extraordinarily talented Mzz Kimberley - an American drag queen with a magnificently powerful soul diva voice, who did a stunning version of Bridge Over Troubled Water as a gospel number, and transformed Peggy Lee's classic I'm A Woman into I'm A Tranny in a duet with Eve. Stunning.

But, of course, it was the appearance of that remarkable double-act, the lovely Fidelis Morgan and "national treasure" Celia Imrie - who entertained us so magnificently at Polari in April this year - which really set the place alight! They opened with a suitably autumnal song'n'dance number, during which the pair were pelted with fallen leaves - and soft toys and anything else that came to hand - by Miss Ferret, and then returned to delight us with a three-way version of Noel Coward's Mad About The Boy, with Fidelis playing the posh masculine type, Eve the Cockney housekeeper, and Celia the infatuated schoolgirl. It was a work of genius, and we adored it!

Eve Ferrett is an incomparable entertainer. There really is no-one else like her. This show was so hysterically funny at times, both Paul and I had tears streaming down our faces and were doubled up with laughter! I am so very pleased we went - it cheered me up immensely.

So overjoyed were we that we are booking for the second of her two shows. Next Monday (11th November), Eve's special guests are none other than Miss Adele Anderson (of Fascinating Aida fame) and the 80s pop legend Hazel O'Connor!

I can't wait.

A Ferret Up The Arts is at the Arts Theatre, Covent Garden.

Obscure gay matinee idol - the musical

It is rare, indeed, for me to utter the phrase "Thank heavens for Pola Negri!" in this day and age.

However, that lady - or at least an artful approximation of her - was one of the (many) highlights of the brand new musical we went to see last night, The Tailor-Made Man. An interesting premise, a musical set in the 1930s world of one of our favourite influential gay characters from the early days of Hollywood Mr William "Billy" Haines, that relates the poignant story of his rebellious resistance to the "norms" of the day in favour of his true nature and his one true love Jimmy Shields.

I have, of course, written of this remarkable love story before - see the entry about Billy and Jimmy in the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp back in 2011.

So how would a musical based upon the rise and fall and rise again of an obscure gay matinee idol fare? Rather well, we thought! Despite what were obviously a few early-run glitches (this was after all only its third preview performance) such as stumbled lines and slight scenery mishaps - the lead actor being clonked on the head with a back-drop was unfortunate - it has all the makings of a West End success. Even the matinee performance we went to see had an almost full house, and an appreciative one at that.

The vocal skills of the assembled company are magnificent: leads Dylan Turner (as Billy) and Bradley Clarkson (as Jimmy) harmonise beautifully, ex-Steps singer Faye Tozer (as Billy's friend and William Randolph Hearst's mistress Marion Davies) does a powerful and convincingly vampish turn, Michael Cotton as the lovelorn Victor displays his artistic and emotional frustration magnificently, and (former stalwart of Channel 4's Whose Line Is It Anyway?) Mike McShane in spite of obvious nerves surprised us all as the domineering Louis B Mayer.

The remarkable and multi-talented players hold the whole thing together with the kind of energy one only ever really sees in a small cast - one minute kicking up a storm as the chorus, next thing playing society party vamps, gossips or back-lot Machiavellians, or else playing the reporter (Lauren Grant) interviewing the older reminiscing Jimmy (Clive Ward), or, in the case of Kay Murphy, portraying the most magnificently camp Pola Negri (the remarkably odd choice by Mr Mayer of a "lavender beard" wife, turned down by Mr Haines).



Adapted by Amy Rosenthal from Claudio Macor's original 1992 drama, the dialogue can on occasion be a bit, well, obvious in its insistence that the audience understand the true nature of Billy and Jimmy and their struggles against the system (studio and society) and, even giving a little leeway to nerves, some of the song-and-dance numbers may need a bit of polish - but nonetheless as a whole the production rises above all that to keep us toe-tappingly engrossed, and to really care about the characters.

When the narrative does get going, when the players are in full fettle, and especially in the best numbers in the show such as Louis B Mayer's Family, Marion Davies' Don't Trust Love, the recurring love duet We Got Time, Victor's This Love Of Yours and the show-stopper Design, this is a startlingly entertaining show.

We came away very impressed, and very pleased indeed to have seen it. I wish The Tailor-Made Man every success, and recommend it to anyone!

The Tailor-Made Man teaser trailer

The Tailor-Made Man is at The Arts Theatre in Soho, to 6th April 2013.

If I’m in the country for more than three weeks I turn feral

John-John and I went to see Julian Clary live on stage At the Arts Theatre in Soho last night, in conversation about his life and his new book. It was a fab way to end a Gay Pride weekend...

Briefs Encountered is described by one reviewer thus:

"...a deft mash-up of fact and fiction, a spectral love story that commutes between Noël Coward’s life in 1930s Kent and that of a contemporary film star who has bought the Master’s house years later.

Drenched in cod Coward epigrams and seasoned with a dash of Stephen King, it’s essentially Blithe Spirit on acid.

Which is not that much of a surprise in that it was written in the same house in which Noël created Madam Arcati."

And indeed that is the case - for back in 2006 (on the suggestion of Paul O'Grady, who lives nearby) Julian bought The Master's old rural retreat Goldenhurst, and has spent an absolute fortune restoring it to its former glory.

The house, purchased by Noel Coward as a young man around the same time as he began his first long-term affair (with Jack Wilson), evidently "called out" to our fave “annoying camp comic and renowned homosexual” [© Julian Clary]. For despite the dreadful state of the building when he moved in, the reputed ghosts and the muck and mud of the countryside, he's still there.

Remarkably, for someone who is evidently part of the "sophisticated set", the "glitterati", or however the public chooses to perceive celebrities these days, he seems to enjoy the rustic life of gardening and village fetes as much as he does the whirlwind social life of London and the stage. Although his rural idyll is ripe for humour:

“If I’m in the country for more than three weeks I turn feral. I stop washing ... and I’ve even been known to drink tap water!”

In truth he explained how much he appreciates spending much of the year in relative solitude, concentrating on his writing and his domestic situation, but after that he craves the attention of being in front of a ribald audience - he adores his panto stints, and will be embarking on another stand-up tour this autumn.

In one of the more revealing anecdotes last night, it was in fact the shaky situation of being apart from his partner (who was until recently working in America for almost eighteen months) that inspired some of the themes within Briefs Encountered, as well as the title of his new show - Position Vacant, Apply Within (which, he says, was conceived at a point when he thought the relationship was going to end).



Julian Clary is a charming man, and last night's audience - true to form, mainly gay men and old ladies - loved his candid discussions about his early years, his family's reaction to his outrageous persona (his grandmother came to see one of his blue shows, but switched her hearing aid off for the occasion), his famous friends (he has made up with Joan Collins after a legal challenge meant he had to change the name of his act from "The Joan Collins Fan Club" in the 80s, and they stay at each other's houses), his dogs (the late "Fanny the Wonderdog", and his current sidekick Valerie: "She has no talent. She's the Claire Sweeney of the dog world", were his words) and his new-found career as a bestselling author.

Indeed, he does have a way with words, so it isn't surprising he has taken to writing. I loved his autobiography A Young Man's Passage, which I read a couple of years ago. “I’m thinking of writing a sequel called Further Up My Passage,” he informed the punters last night. I have yet to read any of his fiction works, but by the sound of Briefs Encountered (a copy of which John-John kindly bought me, and the lovely Julian duly signed at the theatre) I am in for a treat!

Briefs Encountered is available from Amazon.

Julian Clary official website.

Beverley, Pamela or Candice-Marie?

I was very excited last night to secure a ticket (thanks, Paul!) to see one of my fave actresses, Miss Alison Steadman in conversation live on stage at The Arts Theatre. Part of a series of similar one-off events called Face to Face (which will feature later in the year such luminaries as Raymond Blanc and Michael Parkinson!), our host and interviewer was broadcaster Fiona Lindsay, a lady with a charming manner about her but an unfortunately disconcerting slightly frozen expression...

Needless to say, the hour-long chat flew by. Miss Steadman is a fascinating interviewee, recounting anecdotes from her long and varied career on stage and screen - from Nuts in May in 1976 to her recent "Madam Arcati" in the Apollo Theatre production of Blithe Spirit. She looks fab for a woman of almost 65, too!

A natural performer as a young child in Liverpool, Miss Steadman told the hilarious tale of how she spooked the living daylights out of her parents with the careful application of some scarlet toothpaste dribbles ("it looked just like blood - I thought, how wonderful - it made me look like I'd been hit"). She adored the likes of Beryl Reid and Hylda Baker, mimicking their accents and mannerisms as well as those of neighbours and friends, and the family often called upon her to "do a turn" when there was nothing on the telly!

Obviously destined to go to drama school, she nevertheless did her share of more pedestrian jobs - but when she finally left her post in the probation service to head for the bright lights, the staff all clubbed together to buy all the books and materials she would need. Her chosen school was East 15 in Essex - with its close associations to the legendary Joan Littlewood, and its "method" teaching in the style of Stanislavsky - and from that point on, she admitted she was never destined to go down the "classical acting" route. At her audition she was asked not to recite Shakespeare but to impersonate Cassius Clay!



Thus came her associations with the mavericks of theatre, Mike Leigh (her now ex-husband) and Dennis Potter (for whom she expressed the utmost admiration - "there's no-one else out there who can do what he did"), and the quirky off-the-wall characters for which she is most famous. When questioned about the most famous of all, "Beverley" from Abigail's Party, Miss Steadman admitted she hated her for a while - afraid of being typecast, a dread she said was the reason why she would never take a part in soap operas - but has adjusted to the fact that it was her masterful creation of that social-climbing bitch which kept her firmly embedded in the hearts of several generations of audiences.

In real life, she says she is more like "Candice-Marie" (from Nuts in May) than Beverley - she is fascinated by nature, even spending hours watching ants or spiders through a magnifying glass. As Fiona Lindsay commented, and Miss Steadman admitted, she applies the same observational precision and attention to detail to her characters too - the smallest overheard conversation or behaviour will spark her interest! At this point, it became clear why she was strangely drawn to working that other great observer of people Alan Bennett (yet I wondered why she didn't work more with his obvious successor Victoria Wood).

Nowadays, it is for another classic character that she gets recognised in the street - "Pamela" in Gavin and Stacey (a series I must admit has passed us completely by here at Dolores Delargo Towers). The audience rippled with approval when she treated us to some quotes (in character) and anecdotes about that particular role. There was probably not enough time to cover the whole gamut of roles for which we love her - such as the tarty "Madame de Plonge" in Let Them Eat Cake, Adrian Mole's mum, the dry-as-dust narrator of Grumpy Old Women or Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice - but this was a rewarding and delightful evening nonetheless.

Viva la Steadman!

Nuts In May:

Alison Steadman - Let Them Eat Cake - "There just aren't enough hours in my life for this much mincing..."

Alison Steadman - Abigail's Party - Demis Roussos

Alison Steadman on IMDB

Adorable Ferret

Miss Eve Ferret is a survivor from a different era - and an "adorable" entertainer (as Madam Arcati kept saying after we went to see her on stage at the Arts Theatre in Soho last night)!

Formerly one half of the house cabaret act Biddie and Eve at the legendary and formative New Romantic club The Blitz, Miss Ferret's penchant for multiple-layered clothing and big hair, feathers, fouff and faff influenced many of the outrageous costumes of the erstwhile punters at that venue. Punters at the time included Siouxsie Sioux, Haysi Fantayzee, Isabella Blow, Stephen Jones, Spandau Ballet, members of Hot Gossip, Toyah, Gilbert and George, Pete Burns, Marilyn, Princess Julia, Philip Sallon and Martin Degville. Steve Strange and Rusty Egan ruled the roost; Mario Testino was behind the bar; Boy George was the hat-check girl...



And there we were, in the second row of the Arts Theatre, about to see this fabled creature in "a show full of chaos and nostalgia... and her own bar!". She certainly does know exactly how to get an audience enraptured - anyone who opens a show by playing castanets in her bra, manages to segue between Rawhide! and Rapper's Delight, and can mash-up Mule Train with Milkshake has my vote anyway!

Her (very rude) ad-libs, interplay with the Bette and Joan set upon which she was performing, her props (feather head-dresses, toy poodle, whip and hobby-horse among them), knowing asides to the audience, and of course the occasional slug of gin from the on-stage mini-bar had the audience splitting their sides with laughter! No challenge was beyond her - she sang the most bizarre range of songs, including Ten Cents A Dance, the Osmonds' Crazy Horses, Billie Holiday's Good Morning Heartache, Peggy Lee's I'm a Woman, and as a finale the classic Blancmange number Living On The Ceiling!



Exhausting, but downright bloody brilliant entertainment - I wouldn't have missed this for the world...

More Biddie and Eve

Playing bitches

We went to see the first preview performance of a budding extravaganza last night - Anton Burge's new play based on the lives of two of the greats, Bette and Joan. It was superb!

Featuring the remarkable talents of Anita Dobson as Joan and Greta Scacchi as Bette, this is a tour-de-force of bitchery, as the two ladies play out a series of monologues (with the occasional meeting in between) in their dressing-rooms at the set for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. And play them they certainly do!

Miss Scacchi has Bette down to a "T", all her exaggerated twitches, her arrogance, her exasperated melodrama, her coarse swearing and her clipped vocal delivery. Never neglecting the pathos that lay behind the tough old broad - her need for a "good picture" in order to pay the domestic bills for her domineering mother Ruthie and mentally-ill sister Bobby, her bad marriage(s), her acceptance of the fact that she was never a great beauty - Miss Scacchi nevertheless makes the "monster" that was Bette really come to life.

She gets to deliver some of the best Bette Davis lines, too!

• "Sex. God's biggest joke on human beings." (to which Joan allegedly quipped, "I think the joke's on you."
• "Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life."
• "I've always liked men better than women."
• "I was known as the little brown wren. Who'd want to get me at the end of the picture?"
• "Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."
• "She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie." (on Joan Crawford)

Anita Dobson, however, got the juicy (and somewhat more difficult) role, in portraying Miss Crawford. Simultaneously sugary-sweet (her catchphrases "Bless You", and "Eternal thanks, Dear", and her insistence on "good manners" are sublimely irritating - imagine what Bette made of them!), yet ruthlessly driven by ambition, resentment, control, and an obsessive desire to be loved (by fans, by directors, by co-stars, by men), Joan was a conundrum.

From her early escape from rural Kansas via the casting-couch to stardom, to perfectionist obsession, to pure evil, Miss Dobson captures Joan Crawford perfectly - particularly in the malicious way she wore a weighted belt in the scene where Bette has to drag her out of bed, knowing that Miss Davis had a bad back. Superb!

She also delivers some classic lines:

• "If I can't be me, I don't want to be anybody."
• "I was born in front of a camera and really don't know anything else."
• "If you’ve earned a position, be proud of it. Don’t hide it. I want to be recognized. When I hear people say, ‘There’s Joan Crawford!’ I turn around and say, ‘Hi! How are you!’"
• "Nobody can imitate me. You can always see impersonations of Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. But not me. Because I've always drawn on myself only."
• "I have always known what I wanted, and that was beauty... in every form."
• "Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public likes that." (on Bette Davis)

Despite some first-night glitches, this was a great show, and very me, dears...

I highly recommend this show - it is booking at the Arts Theatre to 25 June 2011.

And just because...

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane (Drag Mix) - Mixed By Jacqueline Hyde

A very entertaining lecture indeed!

I went last night to see a real treat - the preview of Sandra and Susan Give a Lecture, the new show by Sandi Toksvig and Sue Perkins that they will be taking to the Hay-on-Wye Festival in May.

It was truly fabulous! The show's format is entirely interactive - based on the premise that the audience can choose a subject and the ladies will be able to construct a "lecture" out of the material they gather.

Starting with an elimination general knowledge quiz (all internet and phone access being banned), they began the intelligence-gathering with the "last woman standing" - who turned out to have a career that consisted of tweeting about pancakes and had an interest in insulation, so the comedy had already begun to write itself! - and played "pass the mike" with the public. The various audience members picked out by the mistresses of ceremony obliged by steering the eventual subject of the lecture down a meandering path towards "The History of Recycling", which they duly delivered in part two.

It was marvellous stuff, almost completely ad-libbed, and suited these two incredibly talented comediennes down to the ground.

The interaction, although potentially dangerous given the unpredictability of audiences in general, worked brilliantly. Everyone felt really involved in the dénouement (the "lecture"), and from the outset through to the general "question and answer" section at the end of the show Sue and Sandi seemed perfectly relaxed and at home with it all.

Brilliant!

Tickets for their show at the Hay Festival will be on sale soon.

The sweet silver song of the lark

I managed to get free tickets to see a unique show last night. It's not every day that you get an opportunity to see a real Hollywood legend live on stage...

Shirley Jones (for it is she) has had a seven decade career in film, stage and TV. She was a child prodigy back in Pennsylvania, was lauded by Rodgers and Hammerstein - appearing on stage in South Pacific, and, most famously, on film in both Oklahoma and Carousel - and has played Vegas and Broadway but bizarrely, never London. She is of course more famous to the wider audience as the mother of the divine David Cassidy (her real life step-son) in The Partridge Family. All this, and more, Miss Jones included in the charming anecdotes with which she peppered the performance.

And what a performance! Opening with a video vignette of excerpts from her finest screen moments, including her Oscar-winning performance in Elmer Gantry, the lady herself appeared looking very well preserved and starry in her sparkly showbiz outfit. Admittedly her voice is not as polished nor as strong as it used to be (but then again, she is 76 years old after all), and on occasions she wobbled around the mellow notes and the quieter end of the register - but bejeezus can she still belt out the semi-operatic high notes! And belt them she did - a marvellous repertoire of songs from her films and shows, including You'll Never Walk Alone, People Will Say We're in Love, If I Loved You, 76 Trombones and much more, plus a well-aimed tribute to Sondheim (on the occasion of his 80th).

This was very much a show about the Cassidy family as well as Miss Jones' career - veering dangerously close to mawkishness on occasion, with tributes to her late husband Jack Cassidy and her sons. All this without a mention of Jack's numerous affairs with men, their divorce way back in the 1970s nor his unfortunate death in a house fire that may have been caused by a drunkenly dropped cigarette or a pan catching fire...

But we forgive her that. Her asides to the audience - particularly about on-screen kisses with a galaxy of Hollywood's greatest leading men, and her regret at never having had an affair with any of them - were delightful.

Speaking of her family, she was ably supported in the show by her lesser-known (but nonetheless very cute) son Patrick. His was a slightly more comedic and occasionally surreal turn, especially when he performed a "duet" with a cardboard mask of his older yet smaller brother David. However his take on his dad's brilliant song My Fortune Is My Face, and his masterful version of Robert Preston's classic Ya Got Trouble (a very complicated patter song from The Music Man that I have never heard anyone else do) more than made up for that.

In a show of almost two hours duration, the time flew by. Yes there are faults - the format is slightly stilted, the backing musicians (particularly the drums) almost drowned out the ageing diva, and the set is bizarrely cluttered - and I don't think I would have been happy to pay £42.50 for the top tickets. However, in all this was a joyful and memorable evening, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Here are a couple of classic moments from Miss Jones' career:

Shirley Jones - Till There Was You [The Music Man]

Shirley Jones & Claramae Turner - You'll Never Walk Alone [Carousel]

And here's that song from The Music Man (again):

Robert Preston - Ya Got Trouble

Shirley Jones website