Tag Archives: Holly Revell

Myra DuBois: A Problem Shared

★★★

Online

Myra DuBois

Myra DuBois: A Problem Shared

Online

Reviewed – 25th November 2020

★★★

 

“Myra is a seasoned pro, but her oxygen is a live audience”

 

Myra DuBois, or ‘The Siren of South Yorkshire’ as she describes herself, has been dispensing her particular caustic brand of wit and wisdom on London stages for the past 12 years, from well-known queer cabaret spaces like the Royal Vauxhall Tavern to the Soho Theatre and the Southbank Centre. A Problem Shared is Myra’s gift to us all in lockdown, allowing us to tweet in with our problems and receive personalised advice; reminding us, always, to breathe in with resentment and out with gratitude.

Once the show starts, we find ourselves in Myra’s office, complete with glitter curtain, a decanter of gin, and her downtrodden sister and assistant Rose Lavender manning the phone. It is definitely worth tuning in a little early however, to see the marvellous pre-show adverts: Legal Help from Norfolk & Chance; Rose Lavender’s signature perfume ‘with high notes of lavender and rose with a hint of sensual Rotherham’ to name but two. The show is basically Myra’s take on a simple Agony Aunt format with a few little surprises thrown in – a couple of hand-delivered letters through the glitter curtain and a wonderful appearance from the evil Miss Corona Virus herself, who, resplendent in green, regales us with a topically updated version of Peggy Lee’s Fever.

Myra is a seasoned pro, but her oxygen is a live audience. Watching her at Johnny Woo’s wonderful UnRoyal Variety Show a couple of years ago reduced this reviewer to helpless tears, whereas last night’s small screen performance at the kitchen table only mustered a few little chortles. And therein lies the problem. Drag and cabaret performers NEED a live audience. The lifeblood of this kind of show is the unscripted arch comeback, and the heady rush of boozy laughter. The energy of queer performance in particular comes from the joy and ownership of shared space; the subversive power of being in the majority for once and taking over the gaff. God knows it’s a much-needed energy right now, and power to Myra for doing her bit to keep the show on the road, but let’s bloody hope she can take her rightful place back in a roomful of revellers before too much longer.

 

 

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Holly Revell

 

Myra DuBois: A Problem Shared

Online via www.myradubois.co.uk

There is one more performance on Christmas Eve which will be a pre-record

 

Recently reviewed by Rebecca:
Henry V | ★★★★ | The Barn Theatre | March 2020
Superman | ★★★½ | The Vaults | March 2020
Fanny & Stella | ★★★★ | The Garden Theatre | August 2020
Antony & Cleopatra | ★★ | Theatro Technis | September 2020
C-o-n-t-a-c-t | ★★★★ | Monument | September 2020
The Tempest | ★★★ | Turk’s Head | September 2020
Living With the Lights On | ★★★★ | Golden Goose Theatre | October 2020
The 39 Steps | ★★★ | The Maltings | October 2020
Visitors | ★★★½ | Online | October 2020
Eating Myself | ★★★★ | Online | November 2020

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

In the Beginning

★★★★

Katzpace

In the Beginning

In the Beginning

Katzpace

Reviewed – 10th February 2020

★★★★

 

“The foam padding around his hips and his flaming red wig are presented as just as authentic as the mud and green of the countryside”

 

‘Performing the words of Alex Marlow, please welcome to the stage… Alex Marlow’. Written on Subterranean Homesick Blues style placards, the opening of In The Beginning aptly opens a show that perfectly embodies the new wave of self aware, contextualised drag performance.

London is currently home to an exciting and innovative culture of burlesque that challenges and pushes the limit of what is traditionally seen as drag. From the rise of Drag Kings in collectives like The Pecs to The London Short Film Festival opening with a night of alternative drag, showcasing cabaret that centres around neurodivergence and race, this is an exciting place to be. With this show, writer and performer Alex Marlow and director Deirdre McLaughlin offer a highly personal and sensitive contribution to this, ultimately pulling at the corners of cabaret itself and seeing where its limits are.

The show jumps around between genres, from mainstays of drag like the lip synch, the clanging double entendre and the intense eye contact with the audience, to more serious formats such as poetry, personal memoir and long moments of introspective silence. What complicates this is that they are not sealed off from each other but intertwined and overlapping. There are intense poetic monologues delivered in full drag and lip synched numbers in jogging bottoms. All the while, Marlow is narrating small vingettes of his life now and his life growing up queer in rural Lancashire, tackling huge topics with personal specificity and grace. This erratic combining does not make for a confusing piece, however, but for one that is touching and funny, requiring the audience to second guess their assumptions about gender, performance and power at every new combination.

The success of this relies heavily on Marlow as the single performer. Luckily, he is an excellent one. His physical performance is by far his strong point as he throws his body round an almost empty stage, flipping from catwalk to skulking to modern dance. He also has incredible comic timing, as is showcased in a short, strangely emotional skit about anal sex and guava which he performs whilst happily snacking on the fruit which he has pulled out of his bra.

Although sparsely populated, the staging and props of this piece create one of its strongest features. Marlow flips between wearing a wig and not, and whilst he isn’t, it sits on an elevated wig stand, watching over the proceedings like a judge. Drag is about layers, traditionally the adding of them. Make-up, padding and prosthetics take the natural and make them unnatural. Marlow complicates this by constantly playing with these layers and shifting around in them. Clothes are taken on and off in quick succession, a full face of makeup disintegrates but shiny earrings remain. There are also long poetry sequences about nature and the pastoral, surely the most ‘real’ thing which most drag avoids dealing with for precisely that reason. Marlow runs into it, however, relishing in the smell of crushed nettles and smearing mud over his impeccably done face.

The smartest move he makes is that none of these layers are prioritised. The foam padding around his hips and his flaming red wig are presented as just as authentic as the mud and green of the countryside. Drag can be gritty reality as much as it can be escape from it. Although perhaps some of the writing could be neater and the transitions between sketches smoother, this is a dazzling piece of cabaret that shows that there is no truth under drag but rather, like turtles, its drag all the way down.

 

Reviewed by Cleo Henry

Photography by Holly Revell

 


In the Beginning

Katzpace until 12th February

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Dead Reckoning | ★★½ | May 2019
Everything Today Is The Same | ★★★ | May 2019
Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fuck. | ★★★ | May 2019
You’re Dead Mate | ★★★★ | June 2019
Romeo & Juliet | ★★★★ | July 2019

 

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