اللغات المتاحة
Anne Frank. Jeff Mangum. And Salty Brine. Maybe
Brine is not a stranger to London. He has now brought several entries from his Living Record Collection to Soho Theatre’s basement cabaret bar and the main theatre but still curiously remains, in the words of Robert Rankin, well known to those who know him well. He brings a simple formula to his outings: one book, one album and one slice of autobiography.
No matter how unconnected his choices seem when the curtain goes up, Brine has a magical way of bringing them together. Bigmouth Strikes Again saw him uniting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead. After decrying Morrissey’s more extreme views, he asks us who was the real “monster” here: the controversial singer or those that enable him by buying his albums and going to his shows?
This time around, his eclectic eye has fallen on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (an obscure indie album from the late 1990s written by Mangum), The Diary of Anne Frank and Brine’s first adult relationship. It’s an eyebrow-raising selection but one that makes complete sense by the time the obligatory standing ovation comes around.
Through PowerPoint, paper airplanes and passages from Frank’s diary, he compares his own feelings of young love with descriptions of how the doomed teenager and her friend Peter grew closer while hiding from the Nazis. After a graphic description of how life begins and some wide-eyed explanation of the statistics behind the process, Brine takes us on a metaphysical journey which chains these ideas to Mangum’s focus on procreation and reincarnation. It’s not the most obvious of associations but it comes with such boundless passion and charisma that it becomes hard to see things in any other way.
Like many of today’s world-class cabaret royalty (think Lady Carol, Reuben Kaye, Benjamin Louche, Meow Meow and Puddles Pity Party), Brine has two key characteristics. The first is a voice that ranges from immersive spoken word to powerful singing, an instrument that could fill a concert hall or fascinate the front row of a cabaret bar. The second is a personality that takes humble components – in this case an American accent, a gloriously camp personality, a strawberry-and-cream neckerchief and a knitted tank top that only a mother could love — and transcends them to become something more.
He’s played the main space in this theatre but is perhaps better suited to the more intimate spaces where he can demand and retain the attention of the room for ninety minutes without pause. Even those obeying the first rule of cabaret should beware: he flirts with those sitting by the aisles, croons to the punters in the back row and stomps out a map of what Frank’s home would have been (including her hiding spot).
Facts and numbers spill from him and fold into his blended narrative effortlessly. Before plunging headlong into “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One”, he tells us that orange vegetables take two years to bloom but produce crops after only one year and hence the rarity of carrot flowers; he follows that up with an illustrated guide to how millions of sperm and thousands of eggs are involved in the creation of each and every human being. Even if we haven’t (yet) written a famous diary or a classic album, we are all special.
He takes Mangum’s lo-fi musings and turns them into magnificent musical theatre numbers whose lyrics are in service to his central themes. Accompanied by a live band, the songs’ clever melodies become anthemic stompers. He reproduces from memory the dates and details that are not in the diary (including Frank’s capture and Peter’s death). And he lays out the bitter feelings of finding out that the man he loved no longer felt the same way. Through it all, we sit in the eye of this emotional turbulence, swept up and held high in Brine’s tornado. We see the wreckage from a distance even as we feel the sadness in our bones. No-one walks out of a Salty Brine show without feeling at least a little wistful.
Salty Brine: How Strange It Is continues at Soho Theatre until 19 September
Image Credit: Soho Theatre
.jpg?format=auto&width=365)
