EVE: ALL ABOUT HER at the Soho Theatre
★★★★★
“It is a highly skilled and immaculate piece of theatre cabaret. Complicated and captivating”
One man, one microphone, one hour. Keith Ramsay, actor and cabaret artist ambles into a hazy spotlight; assured, but with eyes like a threatened panther. Dressed for the Rat Pack but coifed for a 1980s Goth revival. One man, in one hour, playing a host of men – and women. An Edinburgh hit last summer, and a recipient of The Stage Edinburgh Award, Ramsay is now beguiling London audiences with his spellbinding monologue “Eve: All About Her”.
So, what about Eve? Indeed – what is it all about? It’s a question that you bring to the venue, and leave with too. Obviously, the starting point is Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950s classic movie starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter – as the eponymous Eve Carrington. But within minutes we lose track of the many tangents Ramsay veers off on as he throws it into the pot and sees where the ripples take him. It is a far from linear route as the audience are thrown from side to side on the switchback ride that Ramsay’s frenzied performance takes us. The thrill is in no way dampened by the knowledge that he is, against all evidence, firmly in control of his material. It is a highly skilled and immaculate piece of theatre cabaret. Complicated and captivating. A checklist of Hollywood’s finest; the Grande Dames and the divas, delivered with a white-knuckle energy.
It is devilishly difficult to keep up with. Quotations bounce off the footlights, clashing with new ones that are already forming and falling from his lips. Written by Ramsay too, the prose is anarchic and literate. Shades of Hunter S. Thompson flicker with Kurt Vonnegut, Budd Schulberg and even Raymond Chandler, blurring together, flickering like an old movie projector while the vibrant language splashes its hues over the narrative like a coked-up Pollock. Backstories mingle with poetic licence as some sort of wide-eyed young man’s road trip winds up in Eve Harrington’s fertile imagination.
“Movement, mimicry, pastiche and sheer originality are part of Ramsay’s make-up”
It’s a whirlwind tour. A tornado of a performance with seemingly no eye to the storm – no calm centre. Caught in this maelstrom of mayhem are the likes of Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, Candy Darling, Vivien Leigh among many many others. There are hops through time with references, some oblique, to the Pet Shop Boys, Amy Winehouse and Kim Carnes (again – among others).
Movement, mimicry, pastiche and sheer originality are part of Ramsay’s make-up. Vocal expressions and impersonations are seen through a house of mirrors, distorted and refracted. You just want to get inside his mind and see what sort of prism is contorting his thought processes.
It changes gear when he breaks into song. We can breathe again, but only for a moment, until his reinterpretations take our breath away again. ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ couldn’t be further removed from Doris Day. Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’ segues into Judy Garland’s ‘The Man That Got Away’. Neither Stephen Sondheim nor Liza Minnelli can be seen anywhere near his version of ‘Losing My Mind’. Ramsay’s interpretations are unique, showcasing an extraordinary vocal range.
A compelling show. Deliciously Avant Garde, with the alarm-bell ringing allure of smeared lipstick. Experimental and queer. Deeply intelligent and erudite, but with tongue in cheek. Ramsay’s writing is poetic, so he has earned the poetic licence to do what he wants with it. His performance is thrilling, and rich in humour. “Offstage I hate me” he semi-croons in the guise of Eve Carrington (after all – isn’t this what it is all about?), “but onstage I’m absolutely in love with me”. And so are we.
EVE: ALL ABOUT HER at the Soho Theatre
Reviewed on 24th August 2023
by Jonathan Evans
Photography by Steve Ullathorne
Previously reviewed at this venue:
String V Spitta | ★★★★ | August 2023
Bloody Elle | ★★★★★ | July 2023
Peter Smith’s Diana | ★ | July 2023
Britanick | ★★★★★ | February 2023
Le Gateau Chocolat: A Night at the Musicals | ★★★★ | January 2023
Welcome Home | ★★★★ | January 2023
We Were Promised Honey! | ★★★★ | November 2022
Super High Resolution | ★★★ | November 2022
Hungry | ★★★★★ | July 2022
Oh Mother | ★★★★ | July 2022
Eve: All About Her
Eve: All About Her
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