Meow Meow review – kamikaze cabaret combines clownish comedy and crooning

Soho Theatre, LondonWhether singing or crawling cleavage-first over the shoulders of her crowd, the eccentric diva asks what an artist should do in such ominous times‘I do think in 90 mins,” says the kamikaze cabaret performer Meow Meow, “we can really make a difference.” It’s a joke, clearly: in the face of encroaching tyranny and freedoms everywhere circumscribed, this blithering and eccentric diva seems unlikely to be much use. It’s all she can do to get her show started, wheeling a piano effortfully on stage, replaying the whoops and cheers of bygone gigs and glories on a feeble Walkman. And yet, by the end of It’s Come to This, Meow Meow – AKA Melissa Madden Gray – seems really to want to ask: what, in such ominous times, should the artist do?You can see why the question might concern her, engaged as she is with the songs of the Weimar era (Brecht and Weill’s Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife gets an outing here). Elsewhere, our big-haired, boundaries-free host twins chanson with clownish comedy in unique combination, now crooning Jacques Brel, now crawling cleavage-first over the shoulders of her crowd. As audience members are press-ganged on stage to fondle and manhandle its star, the show (with piano by Ben Dawson) can seem like an experiment to see how battily you can behave before the song you’re singing is eclipsed entirely.At Soho Theatre, London, until 24 May. Continue reading...

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