“Ladies and Gentlemen … what happens when a glamorous show girl and eccentric drag queen are brought together by fate …?” 

That’s what the teaser for Voix de Ville tantalises us with when we check it out on the internet in advance. It tells us a lot more, too, but that’s enough to get the juices flowing and I have no doubt that’s what was intended, some gentle titillation that would result in my buying a ticket – or ten.

Selling a show is a challenge because producers want everyone to come, especially those who perhaps wouldn’t normally be in their market niche because it’s these folk who create the profit margin or, in the case of the theatre, determine whether there will even be one, so the desire to oversell is always a temptation. Chances are the publicist is working on marketing material before the show has even been made which is an additional challenge especially as audiences tend to assess the success of a show against its pre-production promotional material. 

No such problem with Voix de Ville because what you see is what you get, from the somewhat underplayed, sensual online teaser to the absolutely classic poster displayed in the foyer of the venue, each of which quietly exposes an absolute authenticity that this old classicist, for one, admires. 

There are genre crossovers, of course, but these simply validate what Lilly Loca’s Vaudevillians are all about because they clearly know – and value – the history of what they have come to do so well.*

TAPAC Theatre is an excellent venue for almost anything you can name. The foyer is a great gathering area for preshow and interval drinks or to catch up with cast and crew post show. 

The performance space has been transformed with suitable magnificence and, one must say, great care. A raised stage juts into the audience and we sit round the circular catwalk in comfortable red chairs and at black-clothed tables with candle centrepieces surrounded by handsful of sparkly red glitter (much of which  came home with me and poured out of my note book onto my keyboard when I sat down to write this morning). Glitter is as glitter does – so thanks for that.

All in all there is a sense of rosy opulence and the full house reflects this as they sip their bubbles and sit quietly waiting.

The choice of preshow music sets the scene, and throughout the show we are subtly taken into another world, the world of the big band, of ‘licorice-stick’ and horn, of Charlie Parker, Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington and the glamour that was the ‘30s. The Charlie Bird inspired ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ precedes the arrival of the excellent house band, The Spietatet Jazz Trio (bass, drums and saxophone), and the first appearance of the fabulous Lilly Loca herself resplendent in duck egg blue, classic, purple, scallop shell feathered fans, breath-taking heels of Everestian proportions and very little else.

Enter Patty Haag who is billed as The Hideously Fabulous Stage Kitten and who totally lives up to all aspects of this nomenclature. Haag rescues Lilly from the clutches of The Predator with a quick smack from her leopard-skin hand bag and this wee opening sketch is over almost before it has begun. It’s quicker than removing Lilly from the railroad tracks with the loco bearing down and the scene serves its purpose before Lilly – completely recovered from her ordeal – takes us through an hilarious vocal warm up where we, the audience, end up sounding like the climax of a very bad porn movie while she manages to remain demure enough to introduce her first guest artiste, Fever Pitch.  

Pitch, from Australia and billed as ‘The Vociferous and Veracious Vandal of the Vaudevillian Variety’, is declared to be the love child of Chuck Norris and Freddy Mercury which would have pleased the handsome Mercury were he not dead at the moment because Pitch is drop-dead gorgeous but Norris, it could be imagined, would have been less well pleased. 

Fever Pitch is unrivalled in red and white striped, turn-of-the-century bathers and Lord Kitchener moustache, the epitome of the strongman, and he proceeds to pay his dues with aplomb. He’s a fine performer and the applause that peppers his act is testament to that. The set is accompanied by tremendous version of the classic coal mining song ‘16 Tons’ which adds even more legitimacy to the musical legacy, live and recorded, of the entire show. 

By the end of his set, Pitch has disrobed somewhat; a not unpopular decision applauded appropriately. 

At this point it’s worth noting that, at time of writing, Voix de Ville still has a week to run so I will avoid detailed descriptions of the ‘what’ of the acts in deference to your wishing to buy a ticket and experience the show for yourself – you should, as it will certainly sell out – and limit myself to the more generic aspects of each piece.

Following an amusing little sketch featuring the deliciously neurotic Patty Haag, the gorgeous Lilly Loca and a suitcase of moustaches, we meet stand-up comedian Mark Scott who comes tagged as the ‘Master of Filthy, Irreverent Stand Up Comedy’. Scott takes a while to warm to his task but when he does he’s a riot. His material is fresh and unique, his interaction with his audience extremely funny and he seems to make it his personal responsibility to justify the show’s R18 rating. In this he succeeds, I suspect, beyond even his own grubby expectations. 

Ending the formal part of the first half is show-stopper Sophia St Villier. Billed as ‘The Tantalising Titian-Haired Teaser’ and hailing from the UK, where she is in high demand in the best of burlesque clubs, she lives up to every expectation. St Villier puts the ‘tease’ back into strip tease and her ‘strip’ isn’t too bad either. When she delicately wiggles her jiggly bits the audience goes absolutely wild. She makes it all look so so easy when, in fact, it is so so not! Her costumes are scrumptious and every aspect of her presentation and performance are burlesque at its stunning best, wonderfully researched, accurately performed and exquisitely refined.  

Patty Haag clears the feminine striptease detritus left behind by the departing St Villier and the irony of this is lost on no-one. Haag is the embodiment of tat and everything that St Viller – and Lilly Loca – are not, but she manages a dignity that makes us reflect on that which is at once seemingly tasteless and worthy of mocking yet remains poignant and touching. Her occasional interaction with the Spietatet is cruel yet entertaining and the band’s decision to use Mancini’s ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ to mock her with, is an excellent choice. Haag’s character is classic bouffon, a creation with a rich back-story and absolute authenticity, a persona of which Jacques Lecoq or Philiipe Gaulier, had they created her, would be most proud.

Part two of this excellent evening of vaudevillian distinction begins, as you might anticipate, with Haag and Loca in tandem again; Lilly in a delicious apple-red cocktail dress and Haag somewhat less sartorial, introducing Mitchell Pitch and a set bemoaning the effects of the demon drink. Pitch is a magnificent performer and, in this instance, he uses only two straps suspended from the rig to astound and astonish the audience with his strength, agility and expertise. There’s a theme, sure, and we get it, but it’s his athleticism, power and artistry that takes our breath away and leaves us speechless at the end of his set. 

DIY John is next, looking remarkably like the Mark Scott we’d loved in the first act, and, within the context of a DIY TV show for the under 12s, he assembles a few arcane props and a whole bunch of power tools to teach kids how to make a yoyo from a cabbage. It’s bizarre, messy and boundless fun and only what he plans to do on next week’s show could possibly beat what the audience has just seen and experienced. 

The finale again features headliner Sophia St Villier, this time channelling her inner Rita Hayworth to the sounds of the big bands of the 30s and 40s and with moves and costumes to match. She looks like Hayworth, moves like Hayworth, disrobes like Hayworth and I momentarily remember how old I am as I recall seeing all this the first time around. She does Hayworthian things with her beautiful titian hair, rolls down a stocking just like the original, reminds me that, as a youngster I saw – and fell in love with – her doppelganger in Pal Joey with Sinatra and in Separate Tables with David Niven though I rather preferred Kim Novak in that. (I realise that St Villier’s Hayworth performance and its accompanying musical monologue has caused me to reference my early life and I again understand just how profound the experience of excellent theatre can be: I hadn’t thought of Novak for decades nor Hayworth for almost as long.)

It all ends with a tantalising striptease moment: sparkling glitter, poured evocatively from a champagne bottle all down the front of her near nude body, and I become acutely aware of the applause, sustained and passionate, from around me, and it’s clear that, while the men certainly enjoyed St Villier’s performance, it’s the women who are absolutely ecstatic. Of course it is, regardless of sexuality, it’s women who undoubtedly understand this art the best. 

All that remains is the curtain calls and the dancing in the aisles. There is plenty of that and a great time is had by all.

Lilly Loca’s Vaudeville Cabaret production of Voix de Ville is a tour de force. It’s owned by the performers who gift it to the audience. It is class from sparkly beginning to its glittery end. It’s other-worldly and fantastical and I am reminded of the fact that vaudeville bookended the great wars. It is escapist stuff and, man, do we need that right now. 

See it. You’ll have fun. Dress up. It’s worth it. But get onto it, because, if I’m any judge, it’s going to sell right out. 

Now, to clean up all that glitter … 
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* Vaudeville was a style of theatre popular in North America from the 1880s to the 1930s where a collection of largely unrelated performances were grouped together to make a unique whole. There was a commonality of performance type on any Vaudeville playbill and these included comedians, animal acts, magicians, jugglers, strong men, contortionists and dancers, often of the risqué variety. It shared the epoch with similar styles of performance such as Music Hall, burlesque, the concert hall, variety shows and even the name vaudeville – ‘voices or songs of the city’ – which came into common usage after 1870 with the formation of Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company of Louisville, Kentucky suggests an eclectic but representative collection of pop culture performances from the period. There is also a clear link with circus performance and this remains true today where the evolution of circus and vaudeville have many parallels and equally excellent devotees.

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