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Superb working-class cabaret
ANDY HEDGECOCK applauds the results of a new initiative by Equity that gives free rein to working-class talent
STAR LINE-UP: Imran Yusuf, Mark Thomas, Kate Smurthwaite. Rory McLeod and Equity's Mark Kelly
[Neil McFarlane]
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CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
Fair Play Cabaret
Quorn Grange Hotel, Leicestershire (GFTU Education Trust)
DRIVING across the Leicestershire Wolds to Quorn, I narrowly avoid a deer caught in my headlights. It’s fitting that an evening of exhilarating chaos begins with an adrenaline rush.
Fair Play Cabaret opens with a set by compere Mark Thomas. Warming up a small and slightly inhibited audience takes considerable confidence and 40 years’ experience of stagecraft. Thomas breaks the fourth wall, talks about “workshopping” an apparently underappreciated punchline and urges us to rearrange the seating to make performers feel “embraced.” It works brilliantly.
As funny and informative as his much-missed Channel 4 documentaries, Thomas’s act lurches through a range of themes — the vast acreage of land consumed by golf, an airport runway delay, anxieties about the Starmer government and an appearance at a literary festival in Lewes, in the slot before Andrea Leadsom.
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