Tag Archives: Keith Ramsay

Eve: All About Her

Eve: All About Her

★★★★★

Soho Theatre

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EVE: ALL ABOUT HER at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

Eve: All About Her

“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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Preludes

Preludes in Concert

★★★★★

Online via Southwark Playhouse

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Preludes

Preludes in Concert

Online via Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 7th May 2021

★★★★★

 

“it assaults our senses and soothes them in equal measure”

 

Aged just nineteen, Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote his Prelude in C-sharp minor to world-wide acclaim, was commissioned to write his first symphony and he was engaged to the love of his life. He seemed to have it all, yet within months a depressive paranoia and anxiety had stopped him in his tracks; a darkness that no doubt came from within but was also prompted in part by Tchaikovsky’s death, and by the effortful completion of his own Symphony No. 1 which was subsequently panned by the critics. The conductor, an alcoholic, was drunk at the premiere. But Rachmaninoff’s writer’s block had already set in. He was already displeased with his composition, feeling he had peaked too early with his Prelude, and the Orthodox church was thwarting his plans for marriage.

Composing had become impossible. How do you escape the darkness and come back into the light? All this, and more, is explored in Dave Malloy’s “Preludes” which examines, in extraordinary and beautifully surreal ways, the true story of this particular episode of his life. A musical fantasia set in the hypnotised mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

This is not just another musical about a tortured artist. Malloy, who wrote the book, music, lyrics and the orchestrations has crafted an enigma. It defies categories, but also mixes them. It feels experimental but is perfectly formed, it lulls you into its trance-like dreamscape but keeps your attention razor sharp; it mixes the past, present and future. We are in a world where Mahler, Reggae, Beethoven and Doo-Wop can share the same phrase, where Acid Trance weaves its rhythms into the phrases of a Piano Concerto.

The starting point is the composer’s session with his therapist Nikolai Dahl (Rebecca Caine). “How was your day?” she asks – not the question to ask a damaged, depressed artistic genius three years into a stifling breakdown. Keith Ramsay, as Rachmaninoff (or rather ‘Rach’), launches into a monologue which sets the pace for a tour de force performance. Ramsay is the picture of unsettled alienation; wide-eyed and wild-eyed, uncertain of his worth. Intense, chilling and hypnotising. His words bleed into Malloy’s haunting melodies which in turn flow into Rachmaninoff’s timeless compositions.

We are never too sure if the surrounding characters are in the composer’s mind or not, but under Alex Sutton’s riveting direction they are brought to vivid life. They circle him, cajole him and bravely try to help him. Georgia Louise, as Natalya, is pivotal to restoring the composer’s state of mind with her patience, stretched to the limit at times. There are moments when their voices collide in their duets when you can forget everything. Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Tsar Nicholas II brilliantly spill out of Rach’s mind into the camera shot, thanks to the vigour, versatility and virtuosity of Steven Serlin. Norton James, as Russian opera singer Chaliapin, plays with our minds with a Mephistophelean portrayal that verges on psychedelic madness. Crucial to the piece is Tom Noyes at the piano, letting the true genius of Rachmaninoff reveal itself through the musical accompaniment.

The production transfers from stage to camera in an astounding blaze of glory. Aided by Andrew Exeter’s lighting and Andrew Johnson’s eclectic sound it assaults our senses and soothes them in equal measure. Contradictions have never been more harmonious. The mix of classical music, musical theatre, trance beats, neon lights; introspection and overt humour, reality and fantasy, past and present, just would not work on paper. But on stage and on camera it is an intoxicating brew. Dark and beautiful. And hypnotic.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Scott Rylander

 


Preludes in Concert

Online via Southwark Playhouse until 8th May

 

Reviewed this year by Jonathan:
Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Hung Parliament | ★★★★ | Online | February 2021
The Picture of Dorian Gray | ★★★★ | Online | March 2021
Bklyn The Musical | ★★★★★ | Online | March 2021
Remembering the Oscars | ★★★ | Online | March 2021
Disenchanted | ★★★ | Online | April 2021

 

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