A riotous night of cheeky queer excellence, the 160th anniversary of Shoreditch Town Hall is both a celebration and an embrace of the acts it has helped to create.
Hosts Bourgeois & Maurice, cult cabaret legends, start the show with lightning-quick sly quips and lyrics. You’d worry that they’ve stolen the show already, but they’re simply setting the tone and bar for the rest of the evening.
What follows is a wild ride from the beautiful (Corali Dance Company in a wonderfully contemplative showing) to the bizarre (Fanny Bleach’s life drawing session has the entire audience screaming with laughter, delight and a bit of terror). Acts from the Cocoa Butter Club, performing hoop and pole respectively, are slick and stylish feats of incredible skill and physical control. Meanwhile Pecs Drag Kings treat us to three performances that pair comedy with vulnerability in perfect measures.
Riss Obolensky and Fabio Lezonli both bring out the King in Drag King, skewering toxic archetypes with hilarious physical comedy and visual gags. Operotica and Lavinia Co-op bring delicious cheekiness to their songs, and Midgitte Bardot and Travis Alabanza effortlessly keep the audience in stitches with sly faux-exasperation. Emma Frankland appeals to the queer awakening in us all with her joyful tribute to that k.d. lang photoshoot, and Frankie Thompson gives us a juicy taste of their acclaimed show, Horrible Things.
Live captioning is always a boon to any performance, provided well here by Nicola Dutton, and a word has to be said for the space itself. The grandeur of the concert hall is still looking similar to how it did a hundred years ago. Helen Taylor and Sylvia Pankhurst held speeches and demonstrations here, and, we’re breathlessly told by Bourgeois & Maurice after their billionth new outfit of the evening, Meryl Streep actually stood on some actual stairs that are actually here.
There was something truly special about being at an evening entirely made up of work that challenges the norm and finds community together. 16 Acts was the perfect, fabulously irreverent and loving birthday party to a space that has become vital to unique performance.
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