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Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Dusty Limits and Friends
Verdict: Far side of the watershed
London - Battersea Barge - Sep/Dec 03
Dusty Limits and Friends is a group of cabaret performers making monthly appearances together at The Battersea Barge. It's a fabulous ensemble evening. Tonight's theme is 'Memories' - it's the first night of their winter season.
Handsome and enigmatic Dusty Limits sings a clutch of fine songs tonight, including History Repeating, Le Moribond (Jacques Brel), The Way We Were (Barbra Streisand), They Can't Take That Away From Me, Not A Day Goes By (Sondheim), and Je Ne Regrette Rien. His remarkable voice delights, uplifts and inspires. His stand-up is warm and magnificently filthy.
Pretty and elegant Emma Bispham is tonight's guest. Fresh from performing in Boy George's Taboo she delivers two startlingly different songs. My Brother Lived In San Francisco (from the musical Elegies) is a haunting ballad, presented by Emma Bispham with sensitive grace. She changes style dramatically for the Carly Simon James Bond theme Nobody Does It Better. It's a huge song, and Emma Bispham produces a huge - and subtle - voice to create it. She evokes it with gentleness, power, and a glorious, show-stopping, celebratory sexiness. Fabulous.
Damian Kell sings a - very - truncated version of Unforgettable (one word), and gives a fabulous delivery of Where Or When (Rodgers & Hart). He recalls an early sexual encounter - both he and his girlfriend wore dresses - in an astoundingly filthy version of Magic Moments. He's briefly a singing David Beckham, and concludes with Sir Sean Connery performing the Beatles' In My Life. It's a tour de force performance, combining excellently-written and delivered character-comedy with his delightful singing voice.
Louise Hollamby sings An Amnesia Medley (including Remember You're A Womble), As If We'd Never Said Goodbye, If I Could Turn Back Time, and Praying for Time. The purity of her voice and the grace of her delivery astound. The audience is visibly moved by her intimate performances. Tonight she also gets them playing a quiz about 1980s children's tv characters. Some alarming memories are revealed - it's worrying they can remember so much. Not enough drugs.
Michael Roulston is tonight's musical director and pianist, on the venue's Roland R0 150 electric piano. His playing matches perfectly the four quite separate singing styles of tonight's gifted vocalists, and he works with them with a relaxed - and humorous - rapport. It's a fine showing of expert and interpretive piano, greatly enhancing the power of the songs
Louise Hollamby, Damian Kell, and Dusty Limits sing Sir Andrew LLoyd Webber's Memories as a finale. There's an encore - they're joined by Emma Bispham to sing Those Were The Days My Friend (Mary Hopkins) - everyone joins in.
The show's outrageous vulgarity places it firmly beyond the watershed. Tonight's performance was filmed for early-evening TV, but banned by the channel from the airwaves for 'language and sexual innuendo'. The audience loved it - a tribute to the unique thrill of excellent (and naughty) live cabaret - a form deemed high-risk ever since its beginnings in 1930s Berlin. Dusty Limits and Friends have obviously got it right.
Credits: Performers (alpha order) - Emma Bispham, Louise Hollamby, Damian Kell, Dusty Limits. Musical Director (pianist) - Michael Roulston. Technical Manager - Jack. Artistic Director Battersea Barge - Peter Lewis.
END
John Park
reviewed 25 September 03 / Battersea Barge
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
