Proud Cabaret All-Stars featuring Bill Bailey
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Star rating: Five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The last time I saw Bill Bailey perform live he was one half of comedy act The Rubber Bishops, if memory serves, in a pretty grim basement in a North London pub. That was many moons ago and, to coin a phrase, ‘the lad’s done well’ since. Very well.
Having rightly achieved star status these days, he might play prestigious venues like the Royal Albert Hall now, but there’s still a real touch of the street busker about Bailey and that’s very endearing. It would be easier to list what he hasn’t achieved since he was dressed in red and rubberised, and on the evidence of his first turn as MC at the Proud Cabaret’s innovative All Stars nights, he’s bang in form and at the top of his game.
Scarily confident, dressed to thrill as a preacher, hustler and even a flamenco dancer, he could probably play the comb and paper and get rapturous applause. “Live is back,” he shouted, and you could tell instantly he was fired up about being back in front of a human audience. Describing his arena for the night as a “dungeon of deviants”, the crowd hadn’t realised he was actually describing the acts yet to come!
With the enigmatic emcee, cheeky chanteuse Ritzy Crackers having warmed up the audience, Pi the Mime immediately set the surreal bar pretty high. It took a while for people to get the act, but when they did, this very mixed audience loved him. That, as it transpired, was only a tiny taster of what was to come, with aerial acts, fire-eaters, and acrobats from Cirque du Soleil and even Swiss soprano, Florence Hvorostovsky, making a few cameo appearances to add vocal panache to the evening. To the still haunting tune of ‘The Power of Love’ (Frankie’s version) aerialist and contortionist Lady Lydia was visually fascinating and effortlessly seductive.
As much as I admire the asbestos quality of their tongues, I’ve never been that entertained by fire-eaters. But, Shade Flamewater is a true artisan arsonist, toying with his inflammatory props, laying a trail of flames on the stage and even breathing fire out of one nostril.
Then there was Los Angeles-based Jake DuPree. Describing him merely as a male burlesque goes nowhere near doing him justice. A protégé of Dita Von Teese, he’s very much a burlesque performer and dancer while unsurprisingly given his physique, also a fitness instructor who posts weekly workouts on his web page. Mix sexually charged androgyny with immaculately timed, fluid and flawlessly flexible bodily contortions and you get an idea just how impressive he is.
Specialising in hoops, fire, aerials and burlesque, Katrina Louise and Brazilian aerialist Marie Devilreux made their gravity defying gyrations and head spinning, manic twists and turns, look ludicrously easy. So what else could the audience want from this three-act, sumptuously costumed, creatively choreographed evening? Well, how about a forlorn looking clown walking on broken glass and then being literally walked all over (by a glamorous assistant) as he lay prostrate on a sea of shattered bottles.
Proud Embankment has apparently undergone a complete makeover throughout lockdown, turning it into what it claims is one of the most glamorous and Instagrammable venues in the capital. At the end, CEO Alex Proud looked suitably, well, proud, as he gave a thanks and goodbye speech to the cast, audience and backstage team. More than anything you could really feel that these performers had relished being back on stage. Everyone, not just the contortionists, had bent over backwards to entertain.
Derek Smith