Review: TITS & TEETH: A RETROSPECTIVE OF A DAZZLING CAREER, Shoreditch Town Hall
Thrilling avant-garde drag/dance troupe come to the London International Mime Festival.
Quite why there aren't more boundary-pushing, avant-garde, drag-slash-dance troupes around that appropriate film, TV and music to bring us satirically twisted versions of real-life and fictional historical figures, I really have no idea. So let's treasure the ones that are around, eh?
Thick&Tight (Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry respectively) present Tits & Teeth as part of this year's London International Mime Festival and is a look back at over a decade of their mashing genres and cultural influences together. Among the various scenes presented over two hours, there are inspired pairings, political jabs, a sexy throwback to the Seventies and a soundtrack which goes from barnstorming disco to controversial silence.
The two met while training together at Rambert School and have been working as Thick & Tight since 2012. This deep experience shows in the two-handers which bookend the production. In the first, Queen Have & Miss Haven't has an imperious Queen Victoria (Perry) face off against Hay-Gordon's vamped-up Miss Havisham. In majestic costumes designed by Tim Spooner, they mourn their respective losses in a devastating display of modernist ballet set to clips from David Lean's take on Great Expectations.
While that makes sense in a historical fashion, the finale pairing requires more of a leap of faith. Cage and Paige: We Could Go On And On sees a pseudy John Cage opine loftily while a loquacious Elaine Paige natters at length about how she came to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The partner of celebrated dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, Cage is renowned for his unorthodox approach to sound and music including his controversial three-movement work of complete silence '4'33'''. When they are not lip-syncing to the words of these very different musicians, we get a taste of that piece (though, thankfully, not the whole thing) juxtaposed with Paige belting out "Memory" from Cats and Chess' 'I Know Him So Well'. The nifty twist? Both play Cage, both play Paige and the gender-bending performances are both funny and affecting.
In between, there are some scenes that hit between the eyes and some that fly overhead. Empire is a short but powerful skit which juxtaposes quotes from Winston Churchill and Enoch Powell through to Boris Johnson, Preeti Patel and Suella "I have a dream" Braverman with a spinning Vidya Patel; the unmissable and valid point that dog whistles pitched at different frequencies in different eras are still dog whistles is given some real oomph when The Prodigy's "Firestarter" crashes in.
Centrepiece Ode To Edith is a standout episode featuring members of the Corali Dance Company on stage and those of the Camberwell Incredibles on screen exploring the life of the eccentric Edith Sitwell through some blistering dance sequences. Ra Ra Rasputin, a solo performance from Oxana Panchenko, is as unsubtle as Thick & Tight get in this show. This hilarious skit has the well-endowed Russian occultist hoofing to the German disco machines Boney M before showing off maybe just what the Queen saw in him. Engel (Edd Arnold as a preening Marlene Dietrich) and Prima, a Danny Smith and Hay-Gordon double act about ballerina Margot Fonteyn and her friend and choreographer Frederick Ashton are make less of an impression but there's no doubting the fine detail in either.
For fans of audacious, jaw-dropping and eye-opening feats of creativity then forget Glastonbury, Edinburgh or Glyndebourne: pound for pound, there is no better place to be than LIMF and Tits & Teeth is a perfect exemplar of this.
Tits & Teeth continues until Saturday 28 January.
Photo Credit: Thick & Tight
From This Author - Franco Milazzo
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