Christine Weir and Godfrey Johnson’s Tainted Love is the perfect cabaret show for this tiny, new basement venue on the fringe of Green Point’s alternative ghetto; it feels like an underground club in Berlin during the Weimar Republic.
With songs such as Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer), Hanky Panky (Stephen Sondheim), Tainted Love (Marc Almond) and Fuck you very much (Lilly Allen), they explore love in its kinkier dimensions, from playful sadomasochism (Have you waxed your crack? by Johnson and Weir) to Sapphic love (I Kissed a Girl by Katie Perry). It’s on the light and funny side, and you’d have to be quite a prude to be offended.
Choreographer Fiona du Plooy, who made an impression in the camp country and western cabaret Angels on Horseback last year, directs. The fingerprints of that show are evident here.
Johnson and Weir make a superb double act. They are top-drawer performers, with Weir’s exceptional vocal talents and Johnson’s (who sings too) musical versatility. On stage, they have natural comic reciprocity, their witty repartee carried with aplomb into the cheeky and sometimes tricky choreography.
One hopes this will be the start of wonderful duo and great things to come.
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Angels on Horseback is a droll cabaret of country and western songs, many self-penned, ironic in sentiment and darkly satirical. Years of theatrical workouts with the Theatresports troupe have finely honed Fiona Du Plooy and Candice D’Arcy’s emceeing and comic techniques. Like skilful cowpokes on the rodeo circuit, they entertain while effortlessly corralling their quarry, in this case the audience, with whoops and humorous songs.
Director Peter Hayes has dressed the show flamboyantly and introduced in-your-seat square dancing, while Du Plooy’s energetic choreography distinguishes this work above the usual revue show.
Much of the material is camp, about failed relationships and sex. With songs like Texas Annie (by the Wet Spots, those authors of the Labia Limbo), Ode to Ryk Neetling and Erotic Kitchen, you wait in anticipation for what will rhyme with ‘doek’. Then there’s the foot stomping These Boots Were Made for Walking. D’Arcy’s tongue-in-cheek Oh Johannes and Du Plooy’s sardonic almost southern spiritual Blood on My Hands are the solo highlights in a show that really has no low point.
Bluegrass is provided by Gene Kierman and the affable Jamie Jupiter. The Angel’s arrangement of the Dixie Chicks’ I’m Not Ready to Make Nice unexpectedly includes Kierman on French horn to striking effect. Kierman also sings Dolly Parton’s I will always love you, and his naturalism is frankly far more touching than Whitney Houston’s best-selling mawkish rendition.
We look forward to the promised sequel.
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