Tantalisingly cryptic

Imagine a bizarre and incredibly well executed cabaret show. A little disappointing if you had been expecting a plot of some description, but that would be rather missing the point of this otherwise captivating evening of entertainment. On entering the studio the audience was greeted by stylish improvised piano and a gallery of artwork that contemplated masculine beauty in all its forms. I was relieved to see that set designer Will Kerr had not fulfilled his mischievous promise to place tripwires on the stage.

In many ways it was very similar to Joan Littlewood’s ‘Oh What a Lovely War’; the all male cast of five performing song, dance, short comic sketches which were juxtaposed with heart wrenching monologues, and accompanied throughout by a beguiling troop of musicians. However without an embedded theme such as the First World War Pictures of John Gray was at times a little hard to keep up with.

John Gray himself was Oscar Wilde’s inspiration for Pictures of Dorian Gray, but this was of little importance to the final performance which is more concerned with questioning masculine identities and the purpose of ‘art’ in general. As Wilde states in his oft quoted introduction to Dorian Gray: ‘The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless’. Ivan Juritz, the talented pianist and our compere for the night, eloquently expressed similar sentiments in his introduction, and writer John Murray worked much of Wilde’s florid prose into the self conscious narration.

The cast continuously surprised the audience as they turned from slick tango, to acrobatic physical theatre, to the joyous abandon of a freestyle rave – and in every area showed the dedication of director Thomasin Bailey to exploring and perfecting many different forms of performance. With such a wild variety of topics not every sketch could be successful. Some depended heavily on audience reaction and participation which proved problematic, especially when parodying sensitive issues such as televangelism.

However the overall audience reaction was positive and appreciative, and throughout the evening there were many moments that were beautiful and compelling to watch. The scene depicting a bored couple sitting in a cafe, being serenaded by traditional folk singers was hilarious. However the chilling lyrics described the suicide (or possibly murder…) of the singer’s lover: ‘And I don’t know if she hung a rope around her frail white neck line… but Katy Kendall’s dead now and the blame lies square with me.’ Juritz, as a blushing bride to be, was besotted with Michael Sweetman, and their duet combined both the achingly funny and deeply macabre. The five John Grays fluent harmony ‘Amen’ (or ‘Are men?’ perhaps) at the end of the show left the audience wanting to know more.