Flaunt It and Haunt It. Vaudeville Show
Produced by Tiger Lily and Krewd with Tiger Lily, Bambi Valentine, AMBi!, InkBits and Golden Boi. Polit Bar. Manuka. October 26th.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
Up a very narrow stairway to the
sounds of the Polit Bar Into a Halloween
Hideaway of gold beaded curtain around a hanging chandelier and cotton cobwebs
dangling in the spooky air. Here burlesque and Butoh, comedy and cabaret,
Frank L Baum and Bertolt Brecht haunt the night and flaunt the fabulous sexy,
scintillating talents of in-your-face
performers , hosted by the irrepressible Bambi Valentine and Tiger Lily.
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| Tiger Lily. Photo by Adam Thomas |
Flaunt It and Haunt It delivers what it promises, an anarchic
night of vaudeville revelry, unabashed and uninhibited during a cavalcade of the
risque and the ribald, recalling the divine decadence of the Weimar cabaret. From
comedienne Frankie McNair’s flaunting
French Fries to AMBi!'s ghostly spook or Golden Boi's spirit of sleaze, a throwback to Fellini’s Satyricon and Bambi Valentine’s deathly scythe wielding rendition of What
Keeps Mankind Alive from The Threepenny Opera, Halloween is alive and deadly in the narrow
confines of the upstairs Polit Bar. Every act surprises and delights, sending
audiences into peals of laughter as Tiger Lily and Krewd deliver almost three
hours of non- stop entertainment. Tiger
Lily hosts with flair and a haunting sensuality on the saxophone and the
evening presents a cabaret that keeps its audience engrossed on the music,
comedy and burlesque.
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| Bambi Valentine. Photo: David Mackie |
Every moment of the night brings
a new surprise. Stand up comedienne Frankie McNair is a comic force alone or
with her Sweaty Pits twin Ethel (AMBi!) Fringe award winning duo, Sweaty
Pits is an act to watch. As are all the acts in this talented team of
cabaret performers. Bambi Valentine’s transition from the sentimental Tin man’s
song to a convulsed and obsessed Butoh dancer of the darkness turns innocence to demonic possession. InkBits
with the throaty jazz singing voice lends her character an ambivalent
sexuality. It too haunts the evening air and flaunts the mystery of her song of
soul.
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| Golden Boi. Photo David Mackie |
Flaunt It and Haunt It explores the underbelly of society – the
outcasts, the misfits, the rebels and the protests and priestesses of the
darkness. And yet, these are the ones who can see through the darkness to the
light and expose the bigotry, the hypocrisy and the inconsistency of
conventional society.
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| Tiger Lily and AMBi Photo David Mackie |
I climbed the stairway with some slight trepidation. I left impressed by the talent and the intelligence of performers who upheld the tradition of the anarchic and dared to confront and question the conventional and the complacent. Tiger Lily and Krewd embrace a protest as old as the theatre itself, but they do it with an originality that I found refreshing as well as living up to the subversive spirit of the art of cabaret.
