28/09/07
The Yo-Yo Circuit -
Categories: Bonobo Presents gig tonight - a variety night at Cafe Royal. Which is a very fancy place. So fancy that as I walked in from Regents Street, watching 8 similar (so I thought) people walk in in front of me, with no problem but a tip of the hat from the doormen... I meanwhile get doorstepped by the doormen, asking me if they can help me. I say I'm doing a comedy gig here, they let me in. How could they tell I didn't belong there? They let the others walk in with no problem, and I was dressed no different. Nice jacket, pressed white shirt, smart trousers, slick shoes... Was it some look about me that I had, saying to the world "I'm happier in Primark than in Selfridges"? Was in anti-gingerism? Was it the Ryman's bag I carried that set me apart as from a lower class? (They weren't to know the Ryman's bag contains high-intellect mathematical comedic props) Either way, they saw me as staff, as someone who would be more comfortable using the tradesman's entrance. That's not a gay jibe, incidentally. On this rare occasion I actually mean the tradesman's entrance.
Anyway, the show. I was on first, followed by a singer of Bulgarian folk songs, with the occasional squeak which set the audience off, and then set her off laughing. Following her was an excellent yo-yoer - basically a kid who had too much time on his hands, but what a skill he'd learned. It was certainly more than just 'walking the dog'. He walked it, let it off its lead, fed it Pedigree Chum and watched win a rosette for leaping through a hoop and weaving between standy-uppy things*. And following him was a 'fan dancer', a burlesque lady, proudly wearing nipple tassles and little else, waving, post-modernly, a couple of giant electric fans for about five minutes.
It was a rare insight onto the world of cabaret - a melding of entertainment worlds that you don't normally see when you're used to night after night of comedian after comedian. I like to think that each of these acts came from their own circuits. A yo-yo circuit of teenage kids who can't skateboard. A Bulgarian folk circuit, where dozens of acts argue over who goes on first to do the Bulgarian national anthem, and the rest grudgingly realise that the evening has peaked. And a burlesque circuit, where clubs feature up to five or six burlesque acts a night, and where the constant rows are heard in the green room... "Oh for crying out loud - are you going to do the red nipple tassle thing? I was going to do red nipple tassle thing. Well I'll have to do purple then..."
*He didn't actually do this.
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