The Devil Made Me Do It

[click to embiggen]

The Madam and I had another fantabulosa evening at the magnificent Crazy Coqs cabaret bar at Cafe Zedel last night - courtesy of Miss Hope Springs!

Perfectly capturing the archetypal not-so-much-a-has-been-but-a-never-was doyenne of a million cheap hotel and casino cabarets, the "recovering showgirl" is the brainchild of the uber-talented Ty Jeffries (son of Lionel), who not only camps it up, growling breathlessly beneath the towering wig and layers of spangles and sequins, but is also the writer of every song in Miss Springs' repertoire.

As this was a celebration of her Dix Ans au Crazy Coqs, indeed all her old "favourites" were there; excerpts from "her many (mostly unreleased) albums" such as Je m’appelle Hope, Miss Hope Springs Swings with Strings, Das ist Miss Hope Springs and her "1972 Memphis album recorded in High Wycombe" - including her "Eurovision number" Sing One Song, numerous perfect pastiches of genres from Cole Porter to Noel Coward, Bacharach and David to Jacques Brel, including Assets, What's Your Sign?, January Jones, A Seedy Little Nightclub in Pigalle, Carnival, (the very sad) She’s His World, and (of course) her signature tune The Devil Made Me Do It, interspersed with hilarious anecdotes about her life

These included her pool party romps with "Goldie Hawn" at Jack Jones's place with Sonny & Cher, Mama Cass ("eating a sandwich") and Shari Lewis and Lambchop (who came to a tragic end); her TV roles including playing a hooker, a corpse, and the tape outline of a corpse on Columbo; her songwriting career ("Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Blossom Dearie, I wrote songs for all of them. They never sang any of them, but I still wrote them"); and her ill-fated relationships, including her life with current husband Irving (and his boyfriend Carlos!) in a mobile home in Dungeness ("When my husband told me he was getting a little camper I thought – that isn’t possible").

It was superb. Miss Hope Springs is an icon!

Miss Hope Springs showreel and vox-pops

Miss Hope Springs at #WeAreFabuloso

Miss Hope Springs official website

[More Miss Hope Springs]

Mud, mud, glorious mud; nothing quite like it for cooling the blood

Hils, Crog, Madam Arcati and I paid another visit to one of our fave venues, the Art Deco glory that is Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel last night - this time to see a tribute to one of the most popular entertainment partnerships of the 1950s and 60s, Messrs Flanders and Swann!

For the uninitiated (and that's presumably everyone on the windward side of the pond, although the gents did make quite an impression on Broadway in their day), Michael Flanders and Donald Swann were accomplished "revue" players; a cabaret genre that evolved out of a combination of operetta, Music Hall and satire, was embraced by a wealth of artists such as Noel Coward, Tom Lehrer, Joyce Grenfell and Hermione Gingold, and itself spawned variations on the theme, including Burlesque, Follies and "variety entertainment". They wrote and composed numerous sketches and songs, both for their own shows and for others, and in the UK - a nation suffering post-War austerity and deprivation - became "national treasures". Their compilation LPs At the Drop of a Hat, At the Drop of Another Hat and The Bestiary of Flanders & Swann were even produced by the legendary George Martin.



Being fanatics for preserving the legacy of two such great men, our performers last night Tim FitzHigham and Duncan Walsh Atkins were definitely not there to do "impersonations" of the duo, but rather to lovingly recreate the wit, the interplay, the tone, the joie de vivre, the timing and the sheer professionalism that was the secret to Flanders & Swann's success, with a selection of their greatest numbers including In the Bath, The Gasman Cometh, Ill Wind (a song about a stolen French Horn, set to Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 in E flat major), Misalliance (aka "The Honeysuckle and the Bindweed"), A Transport of Delight ("The Omnibus")...

...and these two brilliant sing-a-long numbers that I fondly remember from my childhood:

Flanders & Swann - I'm a Gnu

Flanders & Swann - Hippopotamus Song

If there's one song, however, that could provide both an insight into creative genius and a sign of the times in which they were at the peak of their success, it's this. Who else but they would have dreamt of writing a sad musical lament for all the railway lines and stations that were cut as part of the general "belt-tightening", money-saving, "modernisation" programme latterly known as "The Beeching Axe" (after Dr Beeching of British Railways who presented the report)? Messrs FitzHigham and Atkins did this one perfectly...

Flanders & Swann - The Slow Train

Miller's Dale for Tideswell
Kirby Muxloe
Mow Cop and Scholar Green

No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
We won't be meeting again
On the Slow Train

I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey to Openshaw
At Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors no more
No whitewashed pebbles, no Up and no Down
From Formby Four Crosses to Dunstable Town
I won't be going again
On the Slow Train

On the Main Line and the Goods Siding
The grass grows high
At Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside
And Trouble House Halt

The Sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate
No passenger waits on Chittening platform or Cheslyn Hay
No one departs, no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives
They've all passed out of our lives
On the Slow Train, on the Slow Train

Cockermouth for Buttermere ... on the Slow Train
Armley Moor Arram
Pye Hill and Somercotes ... on the Slow Train
Windmill End

Beautiful.

It was a splendid evening's entertainment. Well done, old chaps!

And here they are...

Tim FitzHigham and Duncan Walsh Atkins as Flanders & Swann

Read more about Mr FitzHigham and Mr Atkins, as well as Mr Flanders and Mr Swann, at their Flanders & Swann: A Drop of a Hippopotamus site.

Coqs, cocktails and cocks in frocks

We had to start the "Festering Season" somewhere - and what better way to do so than in the company of that faded Vegas icon, Miss Hope Springs and her Christmas Agogo! show - at one of our favourite venues, the swanky cocktail bar Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel?

Apparently based on her "lost 1971 Granada TV Special, considered by many to be an unaired classic", Miss Springs reminisced about her co-stars (including Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop - who came to a drug-fuelled end at a Los Angeles pool party, allegedly - Sonny and Cher, Mama Cass, Harry Belafonte, and many more stars of the day; well, in her imagination, anyhow), and her own "Ritz to the pits" journey from Vegas to Paris to her current abode in a mobile home in - erm - Dungeness.

Every one of the "festive" numbers on the bill - despite her woozy attempts to get the audience to sing and clap along as though they'd known them for years - is her own creation; she included such delights as Santa is a Woman, Christmas Calypso, the quite sad ballad Paper Snow, the hilarious Bagels and, of course, her show-stopper The Devil Made Me Do It - all of them brilliant.

With her "Dusty in Memphis" 'do, and her "Joey Heatherton" pill-popper stare, Miss Hope Springs is the masterful creation of none other than Lionel Jeffries' [of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame] son Ty Jeffries, and it is obvious that beneath the sequins lies a great musical talent indeed. But when it comes to intimate cabaret, of course, it's sequins that spell success!

We adored this show.

Miss Hope Springs - Christmas Agogo!

Miss Hope Springs - The Devil Made Me Do It

Miss Hope Springs: Christmas Agogo! is touring the country as we speak - catch her if you can!

"Lady Peaceful", "Lady Happy"

For my birthday treat yesterday, a little coterie from our "gang" (Me, Madam Arcati, Crog, Hils, John-John, Jim and Paul) went along to our fave cabaret venue [described by our star turn as "the most fabulous of London's tube stations"] Crazy Coqs at Café Zedel - to see the triumphant return of an old "friend", the fantabulosa Rick Skye as "Slice O'Minnelli"!

As he helpfully reminded us when we met up after the show, it has been eight years since he last performed in the UK but, my word, he's lost none of the Bazazz for which we love him so!

Displaying Minnelli’s physical and vocal mannerisms along with a smashing voice, Skye has created an outrageous show, tracing Minnelli’s legendary career. This is an evening of new writing, comedy, characterisation and musical performance. - Musical Theatre Review

Adding to the repertoire of (fondly) piss-taking routines and numbers we loved at previous Slice O'Minnelli shows - see here - such as My Wheelie Chair, Don't Tell Mama and Too Quiet, Love, Rick worked into this new revue a brilliant "mash-up" of Kander and Ebb [or "Scrambled and Egg", as he put it] style music with Liza's famous (notorious?) cover of Beyonce's Single Ladies from Sex and the City II, Liza's famous collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys Losing My Mind, and a selection of Liza songs sung "straight" from a range of her shows/films, including Say Yes! from Liza With A Z, My Own Best Friend from Chicago, And The World Goes 'Round and the eponymous theme from New York, New York, and (of course) this one from Cabaret...

Rick Skye (Slice O'Minnelli) - Maybe This Time

An absolute blinder of a show! I do hope [as Mr Skye hinted] that this is not the last time we see the best "Liza" in town in London!

Life is a Cabaret

left to right: Oliver Savile, Diana Vickers, Alexander S Bermange, Suzie Mathers and Liam Tamne

Hils, History Boy, John-John, Madam Arcati and I treated ourselves to an evening of fabulousness last night - a long-overdue visit to one of our fave venues, Crazy Coqs cabaret bar at the beautiful Art Deco Brasserie Zedel [see more here, here and here] near Piccadilly Circus.

The show in question was a hilarious concoction called I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical by Alexander S Bermange (who also played piano for the show, and to whom we spoke afterwards); a revue of songs based around the trials and tribulations of being a West End trouper. Mr Bermange certainly has a way with words (his songs have been performed by many of our faves in the comedic cabaret world, including Miriam Margolyes, David Bedella, Tracie Bennett, Christopher Biggins, Four Poofs & a Piano and Kit & The Widow), and, in the hands of our talented foursome of performers, it was a brilliant show! Apart from being adroit singers, it helped that the boys Oliver and Liam were very easy-on-the-eye...



...but some of the songs the girls Diana and Suzie (also possessors of remarkable voices) sang were just brilliant!



Unfortunately no video evidence is out there of any of them doing songs from the show, but here instead are just a few of the wittiest, by other artists:

Gina Beck - I Wish That My Life Were Like A Musical

Gina Beck - I Love To Sing

Sooz Kempner - Audition

Facts:

• Oliver has appeared in The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked and Les Miserables, and most recently played "Bobby" in a production of Sondheim's Company.
• Diana was a semi-finalist on The X Factor in 2008, and had a UK Number 1 single in 2010 with Once [me neither]; she also played the lead in a West End production of Little Voice.
• Suzie has received numerous accolades for her role as "Glinda the Good Witch" in the Australian, Asian and London productions of Wicked.
• Liam was not only a runner-up contestant on The Voice in 2013, but also entered the You Decide competition to represent the UK at Eurovision this year.

All of them were utterly wonderful.

I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical ends its run at Crazy Coqs this Tuesday, but surely must get a run elsewhere soon.

I hope!

Pure mellifluousness

On Tuesday Madam Arcati and I were thrilled to get tickets for a very special event indeed – an intimate evening of jazz and standards titled It Might As Well Be Spring, courtesy of two of the top performers in their genre, Miss Claire Martin OBE and Mr Joe Stilgoe (son of the legendary Sir Richard, telly favourite in the 1970s and co-writer of Phantom of the Opera with Lord Lloyd-Webber) – in the luxuriant surroundings of the fantabulosa “Crazy Coqs” cocktail lounge at Brasserie Zedel…

The syncopated excellence of Claire Martin and Joe Stilgoe has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. Martin, one of our finest jazz divas, defines insouciance as she controls her perfect timbre, her voice swooping like a seabird from the most glorious moment of an occasional mezzo trills, down to a luxuriously resonant contralto. Her pitch is perfect and her timing pinpoint - there is truly nothing more a cabaret singer could offer.

And then there's Stilgoe. With a reverential impertinence that reminds one of Peter Shaffer’s young Amadeus, eschewing sheet music and much like a Transformer straight out of the recent movie franchise, he becomes one with his piano. Stilgoe really is that good. - Jonathan Baz

I have always adored Miss Martin’s talents – we have on CD When Lights Are Low, a collection of excellent tunes from her lengthy musical partnership with the late, great Sir Richard Rodney Bennett – and she is highly regarded on the “jazz scene”, presenting as she does BBC Radio 3’s flagship Jazz Line-Up show.

Her voice was described on the Musical Theatre Review site thus: ”[Claire] is able to glide effortlessly from swinging a number to caressing it and, at times, she drops from a tone of pure mellifluousness to a timbre that is evocative of a gin and cigarettes habitué.” As we were to discover, she is simply a breath-taking vocal stylist - tackling a range of standards, from Judy Garland (Arlen’s Get Happy) to Lena Horne (on Michel Legrand’s Watch What Happens), with a little bit of everything else in between...

...including this wonderfully sassy (and, we thought, somewhat "Caro Emerald-esque") song, written (surprisingly) by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame - one of my favourite numbers of the whole evening, Do Wrong Shoes. [Unfortunately Miss Martin's interpretation is not online anywhere, so this is a rather cool version by Hazel Miller and Francesca Rubin]:

Hazel Miller and Francesca Rubin - Do Wrong Shoes

Mr Joe Stilgoe is someone of whose music, much to my chagrin, I had heard little before. After this performance, I shall certainly be making amends on that score! He is incredibly talented, and an often very funny entertainer – even reinterpreting the lyrics of such “untouchables” as They All Laughed or Wonderful World.

Not merely a miraculous jazz pianist (the things he can do with that keyboard!) but guitarist too - and he "plays" the mute trumpet, just by “tooting” with his mouth – he has a vocal style reminiscent of Harry Connick or even Bobby Darin (and definitely better than Jamie Cullum!), and could effortlessly switch between swing, “interpretive jazz” and smooth “lounge” sounds, as accompanist to Miss Martin and on his own numbers.



They complimented each other beautifully.

So much of “our kind of music” was here. So many classics by our staple diet of songwriters – Noel Coward, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Yip Harburg, Irving Berlin. In the hands of these two consummate professionals, we were absolutely in our element.

A perfect evening!

Claire Martin website

Joe Stilgoe website

You too can write a great West End score

When we last saw Kit Hesketh-Harvey on stage way back in 2010 it was as part of the long-running (and infamous) Kit & the Widow. Richard Sissons (the Widow) has since moved on, back to his roots as a classical composer and arranger, and instead Mr Hesketh-Harvey has formed a new partnership with his (other) long-term song-writing collaborator James McConnel. Intrigued at how the new combo might work, Al, Mark and I were overjoyed last night to land tickets to see Kit & McConnel in their new regular residency at one of my favourite new London cabaret rooms, the "Crazy Coqs" at Brasserie Zedel.

As one reviewer put it: "[Mr] Hesketh-Harvey, all eloquent Noël Coward wordplay and satirical skewering, remains the focus." This indeed he does, and we, placed right at the front adjacent to the stage, were transfixed (not least by the revealing tightness of his trousers, but that's another matter entirely). He is a consummate camp cabaret artiste - summing up his passion for the art-form ("at one point it was just me and Dillie Keane manning the barricades; it's so pleasing to see venues like this popping up again", he said) neatly, we thought, with his anthem I Am Cabaret.

However Mr McConnel - even if he was the butt of jokes about his resemblance to Hugh Grant - proved to be a more than worthy cabaret partner. As well as singing a number of songs in the evening's repertoire, his shining moment came when he composed (then and there) a wonderful improvised piano piece based merely on musical notes relating to the name of someone picked out of the audience (a "party trick" that apparently Franz Liszt was famous for performing).

Speaking of repertoires, theirs is certainly a wide-ranging one - veering in style from chanson to waltz to aria (Nessun Dorma in Punjabi, anyone? Fab!), from patter-songs to heart-rending ballads (such as Kit's very moving - and angrily anti-war - tribute to a surfing acquaintance who was killed in Afghanistan).

It is of course - in a similar vein to the aforementioned Miss Keane and Fascinating Aida - for their on-the-ball satirical numbers that we adore these boys. And with songs about the forthcoming election, Fifty Shades of Grey, closet racism, Pippa Middleton, and about fighting terrorism with toothpaste, tweezers, nail scissors and all the other things which irritatingly get seized at airports these days (in the name of "safety"), we were not disappointed.

There was everything from a paean to Mary Berry to a song about the recent surprising statistics that sexually transmitted diseases are becoming an increasing problem amongst older people...

Kit & McConnel promo trailer

Some old faves were there, too. One of Mr Hesketh-Harvey's very best numbers [from his previous incarnation with "The Widow"] is the scarily accurate piss-take of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's penchant for nicking tunes from classical composers and passing them off as his own: You too can write a great West End score - steal it from somebody else!"

Kit & The Widow - West End Score

Inevitably, the show would not be complete without their ode to Nando’s chicken restaurants (with apologies to Abba’s Fernando):

"There was something in the food that night
That wasn’t right
At Nando’s."

Kit & McConnel - Nandos

Utterly wonderful, from beginning to end.

Kit & McConnel official website

Kit and McConnel "Over the Yardarm" Sundays at Crazy Coqs

People I employ have the impertinence to call me Myrna Loy

As my regular reader will no doubt be aware, we at Dolores Delargo Towers have - among many obsessions - a passion for Art Deco, and a particular adoration of The Master Noël Coward. Imagine our delight when tickets came up for an intimate cabaret that successfully managed to blend the two things into one...

Brasserie Zedel is a marvellous survivor of the "march of progress". When the Crown Estate decided to dispense with the gargantuan Regent Palace Hotel at the edge of Piccadilly Circus back in 2010 [it had become very run-down, and catered mainly for back-packers and cheap tourists by that stage], parts of its edifice [presumably listed] were preserved to form the cornerstones of the new office and retail development [home to the UK base of Tw*tter, apparently] that went up in its place.

Thankfully, some of the subterranean suites, bars and restaurant also survived in their Art Deco glory.





Perfectly restored and immaculately detailed with posters and photos from the "Jazz Age", Brasserie Zedel now occupies the space and continues that Deco tradition today, with a combination of dining, champagne and cocktails in its three suites. Our evening's entertainment yesterday was hosted in the small-but-beautifully-extravagant "Crazy Coqs Cabaret Room" (known in the 1930s as the "Chez Cup Bar") - in the masterful [pun intended] company of Coward champion and expert performer Stefan Bednarczyk.

And it was superb.

Mr Bednarczyk is more than just an expert in "Noël Cowardry"; he has made it his life's work to get to know the man. Over time he befriended Graham Payn (Coward's widower), Judy Campbell (who Coward called his "muse") and Sheridan Morley (his official biographer, whose widow Ruth is Zedel's artistic director), all of whom provided him with pithy anecdotes and some largely unfamiliar material from which he crafted the show.

Not least of these "rarities" - and we had certainly never heard any of them before - were Coward's poems (or "verses" as he preferred to call them). Mostly autobiographical, and at times achingly melancholy, they provided a marvellous foil for Mr Bednarczyk's interpretations of more recognisable material like Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage Mrs Worthington and Mad Dogs And Englishmen. This one took our breath away - I Am No Good At Love:

I am no good at love
My heart should be wise and free
I kill the unfortunate golden goose
Whoever it may be
With over-articulate tenderness
And too much intensity.

I am no good at love
I batter it out of shape
Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
And gibbering like an ape,
I lie alone in the endless dark
Knowing there's no escape.

I am no good at love
When my easy heart I yield
Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
Which should have stayed concealed;
And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
Into a battlefield.

I am no good at love
I betray it with little sins
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins
And the bitterness of the last good-bye
Is the bitterness that wins.

As reviewer Fiona-Jane Weston rightly states:

"Bednarczyk’s recitations of these works were a masterclass in verse-speaking, embracing enjambed lines where the sense and breath followed from one line into the next, and using the rhythm and metre skilfully, avoiding the temptation to allow the narrative to descend into prose."

His performance of the more familiar Coward songbook was also delightful. Perfectly phrased, yet never veering into sentimentalism or literal impersonation, he gave us a comprehensive tour of later works such as Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans, London Pride, There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner [dedicated to the recent cabinet re-shuffle, with the sardonic observation that despite everything Iain Duncan-Smith and Jeremy Hunt are still in their jobs...], and our own favourites Nina and If Love Were All.

And, befitting of a performer who has his eye on political campaigning - not least for gay rights - Mr Bednarczyk performed the sadly excised male version of Mad About The Boy [that I featured on the occasion of The Master's birthday last year]. The lyrics are memorable:

Mad about the boy
I know it’s silly
But I’m mad about the boy
And even Dr Freud cannot explain
Those vexing dreams
I’ve had about the boy

When I told my wife
She said
“I never heard such nonsense in my life!”
Her lack of sympathy
Embarrassed me
And made me frankly glad about the boy.

My doctor can’t advise me
He’d help me if he could
Three time he’s tried to psychoanalyse me
But it’s just no good

People I employ
Have the impertinence
To call me Myrna Loy
I rise above it
Frankly love it
‘Cos I’m absolutely
Mad about the boy

No video footage of Stefan Bednarczyk performing Noël Coward exists on the web, unfortunately. In fact I can't even find a website for Mr B [although I did find out that he appeared in Mike Leigh's Gilbert & Sullivan movie Topsy Turvy]!

Here, instead, is the opera genius Felicity Lott with her inimitable version of another Coward classic that Mr Bednarczyk performed for us - A Bar on the Piccola Marina:

Felicity Lott - A Bar on the Piccola Marina

If ever this show pops up again (which it undoubtedly will), I highly recommend to anyone to grab a ticket. We had a marvellous time.

And if you are in the vicinity of Piccadilly Circus, you simply must visit Brasserie Zedel!