★★★★★

“A true tour de force and a must-see show.”

Kate Berlant is an excellent comic. The eponymously titled KATE is the second of her one-woman shows to be directed by fellow comedian Bo Burnham and explores the events in her life that have brought her to the London stage. Semi-autobiographical with a good helping of the surreal, Berlant becomes KATE, a young actress (with a devastating secret) who simply cannot cry on camera. The show is deeply ironic. Platitudes and parody abound – Berlant’s material is as smart as it is silly.

KATE laughs openly at the self-importance of the acting world. Before even entering the auditorium, graphics of Berlant are plastered on the walls of the theatre’s stairs. Berlant herself even sits outside the theatre space holding a large sign that reads ‘IGNORE ME’ whilst front of house staff wear t-shirts and hats branded with her name.

The show begins with a five-minute slideshow of quotes from Oscar Wilde, Stanislavski and other theatre greats next to professional photos and videos of Berlant pouting and her iMDb page. These opening slides are amusingly in the same typeface and colour scheme as the Royal National Theatre.

For the following 70 minutes, the audience is treated to snapshots of Berlant’s exaggerated life. Her birth (where she was first captured on film), her difficult family life as half-Spanish, half-Jewish (“They don’t even have a word for that!”), and her move to find fame and fortune in New York City (cue Frank Sinatra). Throughout, Berlant considers who she really is – her love for acting fuelled by a desire to escape her own reality.

Berlant’s character craves the camera. Positioned stage left, certain scenes – such as an audition – are livestreamed up close and personal on a large projector screen. Our star leans into clownery here, her face contorting impressively, as she mocks the acting differences between theatre and the silver screen.

Berlant breaks character numerous times, and it is never quite clear what is scripted and what is not. She giggles at her questionable British accent, expresses frustration at the one-second delay between her camera and the screen, and reruns scenes when she thinks she could do better. The ego of the actor is constantly lampooned – the show is set up as a display for an important Disney+ executive – and descends into angry chaos when the incompetent stagehand Isaac reveals that he has not shown up.

There are some excellent moments of audience interaction. Berlant – playing a seedy bar dweller who has met her character at a bar – shines a torch on an audience member and engages in fantastic nonsensical banter. Knowing looks to the audience and direct addresses are also peppered throughout. Even as the show seemingly falls apart, you know you are in safe hands.

Few props or set pieces are utilised. The screen backdrop displays in simple lettering the location – Porch, Apartment, Nightclub – and Berlant does the rest. She often uses excellent (and hilarious) movement to set the scene or speaks with off-stage or imagined characters to flesh out the space. A particular highlight is a scene of her ‘Irish’ mother (in fact from Santa Monica and an accent she prescribes to explore motherly emotions) rifling through imaginary drawers while cooking and cleaning at great speed.

KATE is very, very funny. It is gripping, clever and brilliantly self-referential. A true tour de force and a must-see show.

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.

KATE at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“A true tour de force and a must-see show.”

KATE at the Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 5th September 2023

by Flora Doble

Photography by Emilio Madrid

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Kate

Kate

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