A Soiree - a meeting or reception, a formal evening out - is the type of event which usually heralds the use of a tie and pleats, so wandering into the Bethnal Green Working Men’s club with more normal attire could be a recipe for disaster.

Luckily for me it isn’t; for the Soiree is cabaret without the usual thrills of elegant surrounds. In fact Soiree isn’t even like the Good Olde Days type of comedy, with its tongue-in-cheek approach.

Soiree is the kind of cabaret which should remind you of back-room entertainment on saw-dust floors of the 1930’s, whether they actually existed or not.

As the website says, the Hostess is a drunk, the DJ a homosexual, the maid is a mute and the pianist plays.

Within the confines of the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club I feel like I am being introduced into an ode to the hurly burly working class vaudeville nights that I have in my imagination.

There is no barrier to what can be touched upon within the realm of the evocative host Myra DuBois. Whether it is a crude joke about Madeleine McCann or an unexpected put-down to a girl on the front row the jokes and jibes are going to be given out in equal measure.

There is always a slightly uncomfortable air to the way the night progresses when the hostess bases a significant part of their act on berating the audience and at some shows this can easily mean that the atmosphere will turn sour, but instead of awkward silences Myra feeds on the energy this awkwardness provides.

Myra exposes the flaws in her own character as much as she berates the audience, putting herself on an equal footing with those she has just chastised by languishing around on the stage or exposing the contradictions in her own improvisation.

It is this aspect of Myra’s act which allows her to get away with calling most women dykes or horror-muffs, but prostrate hostesses aside, the Soiree is about breaking new acts and introducing Cabaret’s greats to a new audience.

Ben Giddens opened the night’s raunchy proceedings with an is-he-or-isn’t-he striptease before one of the stalwarts of the London cabaret scene Scottee read out a fine example of why 1970’s porn magazines had some of the most amusing plotlines, turning the prose from its seedy roots into a splendid short monologue.

Scottee returned to the stage for the evening’s climax with an excellent parody of the ‘90s diet coke adverts that was worth the cover charge alone.

Some parts of the Soiree do need a little refining - the Richard and Judy style interview was a great novelty but I am unsure whether it would work as a regular feature - and one more act would work well with the format.

But as a whole the idea behind the Soiree is a sound one that has the potential to build into one of Bethnal Green’s more important social gatherings and well worth a trip in the direction of East London on a Thursday night.

Tim Clark

Soiree
Show 9pm (doors 8pm)
Thursday, July 2
Bethnal Green Workingmen's Club
£5 Tickets – http://www.fingerinthepie.com/soiree

a

a

a
a

a

a

aaa