by Zahid Fayyaz
Winner of Drag Race UK this year, Lancaster’s Ginger Johnson celebrates her victory with a Christmas residency for most of December and the first week of January. Ably accompanied by the wonderful Sarah Rose on the keys, this is a technicolour riot of music, comedy and fabulous costumes.
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by Laura Kressly
Lucy McCormick, performance artist extraordinaire and queen of the grotesque, starts off this show dressed in a felted tree costume. It calls to mind an out-of-place, awkward child in a school play unsure about what to do, but still enthusiastic. This is an appropriate start to the show’s premise: McCormick wants to put on a cabaret but doesn’t have any friends who could work on her show, so she drafts the audience in to help.
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by Laura Kressly
What is love? Riham Isaac wants to know, so she turns to music, old films, interviews, and religious and secular iconography to find out. She in turn shares a collection of ideas of what love is, isn’t or what it might be. The result is a highly visual, multimedia cabaret presenting an international, era-spanning collage of love and romance.
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by Laura Kressly
Ildiko is half German and half Hungarian. Rosie is half English and half Irish. The two women explore what this might mean, along with how culture, ancestry and migration, make us who we are. Their journey takes the form of an elegant cabaret similar to vintage variety TV shows. Traditional music and folk songs intersperse poignant extracts of personal narrative to make this moving patchwork of stories and anecdotes that make them who they are.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
This show comes straight from New York to one of the world’s oldest surviving music halls in East London. It is a very classy and entertaining tour de force. The concept is a simple one – that a cabaret artist and an opera performer, Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo, join forces to sing songs from their respective fields. The message is despite being from different disciplines they have a lot of similarities, except for being one octave apart.
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by Joanna Trainor
The first rule of Bite Club – tell absolutely everybody about Bite Club! Briefs Factory are back in Britain, and not a moment too soon. Feathers, wigs, exceptional headwear, soaking wet thongs, a man entirely covered in glitter – what more could you possibly want? Heartfelt sentiments and joy? Also check.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
Fresh from a West End run several months ago, Wonderville has hunkered down to do its own residency at its own purpose-built venue at the former Planet Hollywood café in London’s Haymarket, a few minutes from Piccadilly Circus. Here for an open-ended run, there is a mix of magic and variety acts, playing on rotation.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
The now ubiquitous cabaret and circus spectacular La Clique has made its annual return to London for its eighteenth year. As the compere says before the show started, the consumption of alcohol is very much encouraged. Though this leads to big queues at the bars, which will hopefully speed up over the run, it’s a great night out. Located in the spiegeltent in Cavendish Square, behind John Lewis on Oxford Street, it’s a lovely spot on sunny days.
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by Diana Miranda
“Today you can get rid of your fear”, Strangers Like Me Collective promises. As the audience arrives at Fears Eat Life, premiering at the Voila! Europe Festival, they find a sheet of paper on each seat inviting them to write down what they’re most afraid of and throw it on stage. And so, this interactive cabaret show, written and directed by Timna Krenn, begins before the lights go down. To throw one’s fears away to the power of theatrical catharsis seems meaningful enough, and the prospect of having performers enacting them back to us in a dark comedy improv seems like something to look forward to.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
Something I had been looking forward to for a while now was the return of cabaret to the stage after lockdown’s easing. This event is an excellent way to restart this particular art form live and in-person. The wonderful evening at the Pleasance was curated by Newcastle’s Ginger Johnson, an associate artist at the theatre and member of Sink the Pink, an LGBTQ+ collective and club night.
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The Play's The Thing UK 