★★★★★

“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.

DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

★★★

“But Betts, in a flowing, gothic black dress, is a striking presence”

When looking back over our lives, many of us have a ‘before and after’ event lodged in our mind. Some sort of milestone which we use to place memories. Sometimes trivial, often traumatic. What happened ‘before’ remains immutable. The aftershock usually has various, ghostlike pathways as the ‘what if…?’ question echoes internally and insistently. Until we finally realise that the present – and possibly the future – is as unchangeable as the past. There are no ‘sliding doors’ we can control at our whim. Not even in fairy tales.

Michaela Betts, in her atmospheric and candidly personal musical narrative “Dark Nature, seems to have reached that point. It is not always clear how much is autobiographical truth or embellishment, but Betts doesn’t shy away from delivering some dark reminiscences. It is not always comfortable. A meandering stream of consciousness as the show weaves in and out of the realms of fantasy. So much so that it often feels like two unrelated pieces that have converged into an oddly mismatched whole.

But Betts, in a flowing, gothic black dress, is a striking presence. She delivers her story at the piano while, under her schoolmistress like gaze, Antonia Richards relives her younger self. Something happened when she was seven years old. We don’t learn the true, dark nature of this until the end; a finale we are led towards, step by step through songs of innocence and experience. Richards depicts credibly a personality trying to maintain the veneer that everything is still okay (“I was every parent’s dream”) while clearly a childhood has been stolen, and the steps into adulthood are carved in the precipice of self-destruction. As she teeters, losing balance, you almost believe the lie when she repeatedly calls out that “you can’t touch me – I feel nothing”.

Helen Goldwyn’s staging reflects this split personality. One minute ethereal, the next profanely harsh. Some beautiful projected animation draws us in while less successful attempts at audience participation push us away again. Only when Betts sings are we truly rooted. She becomes majestic at the piano, her fragile melodies accompanying her delicately beautiful voice. Unique and melancholic, her songs are dark folk tales in themselves, cinematic in scope but with the intimacy of a campfire. We are seduced but there is always a danger of being burned. No more so than during the closing number “The Rose” with its award-winning animated video projected onto the back wall. The lyrics are the blueprint for this show, the aching melody is the texture that emblazons the outline.

It is a gorgeous moment, but the progression there is uneven. Yet we learn a lot on the way, and are exposed to many important questions of abuse, grooming, body-shaming, gaslighting, coercion, addiction, self-harm, self-esteem. The narrative doesn’t so much touch on these as delivers a punch. But sometimes the swing misses, and the presentation is jarring. To her credit, Betts doesn’t try to supply the answers. “There is no judgement here”. Yet the lack of resolve is a little confusing, and the curtain call suffused with doubt, which we can see written on the performers faces. Is Little Red Riding Hood out of the woods or is the wolf still on her tail?

But “Dark Nature” is a theatrical journey worth taking, if not for Betts’ haunting presence as a singer songwriter. It is the music that truly touches, and lingers into the night. And, of course, the voice.

EVE: ALL ABOUT HER at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“It is a highly skilled and immaculate piece of theatre cabaret. Complicated and captivating”

“Movement, mimicry, pastiche and sheer originality are part of Ramsay’s make-up”

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:

Eve: All About Her

Eve: All About Her

DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

★★★

“But Betts, in a flowing, gothic black dress, is a striking presence”

DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd August 2023

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Ben Wulf

More Camden Fringe 2023 Reviews:

Dark Nature

Dark Nature

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