Songs for the outing
The road we have travelled as a nation on equality issues has been arduous but fruitful and nowadays we (children and millennials particularly) seem far more relaxed about sexual orientation, gender fluidity and everything in between. However, when it comes to theatre the substance tends to be rather serious, witness Angels in America and Inheritance, both brilliant but also tough and demanding. A perfect opportunity in the market, as business folk would say, for a different type of product. Into the breach step Kele Okereke and Matt Jones with a hit and miss musical Leave to Remain (Lyric Hammersmith). Fear not it has nothing to do with our current national schizophrenia. Europe is firmly on the back burner as Alex and Obi express their undying lust for each other.
Director, and choreographer, Robby Graham opens proceedings with a bang. Billy Cullum’s ebullient North American Alex and Tyrone Huntley’s far more phlegmatic British Nigerian Obi are in the process of getting it on when Alex decides, as you do when your loins are on fire, to tell Obi that he’s a recovering addict. Maybe sharing personal information in that way is a turn on though the thumping song that followed that encounter, Not the Drugs Talking, sounded as if it had been conceived in a therapy session. Lust turns to love (give it at least a year people) and now they have a dilemma. Alex’s work will be taking him to the UAE and if they’re serious about their relationship marriage is the answer.
It all sounds very sweet and endearing. In parts it is but at other times, as when Obi decides that he has to invite his bigoted parents who, disapproving of his lifestyle, chucked him out at the tender age of 16, it is a familiar tale. Alex has no such difficulties even if he has to cope with his neurotic mother, who turns up from the US, making an entrance like Cher in the recent Mama Mia’ film. That mix of characters is a guaranteed cocktail of conflict with no resolution. So it proves. The writing is sometimes far too syrupy and it only scratches the surface of the inter-cultural difficulties and unconscious bias that still exists in BME communities around same sex relationships. For some that kind of is a complete anathema.
Thankfully the music is funky, feisty and burns up a furnace of emotion and defiance with a mash up of live and pre-record. Guitarist Chrio Blake does a superb impression of an old-school rock star in the mould of Deep Purple or Ten Years After. Despite all that the writing descends into a dull pseudo-therapeutic analysis of their difficulties when what is needed is a strong and uplifting ending in tune with the music and songs. A brave and alternative attempt to write a familiar story in a different way that needed to let go and rock.
Meanwhile Sotira Kyriakides is drooling…
The best beef is not the only renowned Argentinian export. Tango is up there too, and justifiably so on the evidence of German Cornejo’s magnificent show, Tango Fire (Peacock Theatre). No stranger to Peacock audiences, Cornejo and his troupe of amazing dancers and musicians are the best ambassadors for this dance form which fizzles with eroticism.
Oozing virility and femininity in equal measure, Tango is about sex and passion. Cornejo has brought together five of the most accomplished and celebrated professional tango couples – including himself and the stunning Gisela Galeassi – and each moment of the show drips with sultry, pent-up desire characterised by the combination of flowing and staccato movements that exemplify this dance. The couples writhe and intertwine in the most beautiful and surprising ways, staring into each other’s eyes with wanton desire. The physicality, both sexual and gymnastic, is breath-taking and intoxicating and, despite the chill outside, the performance feels like a summer evening in Buenos Aires. The superb live band and singers more than do justice to the wonderful music, altogether making for a ravishing evening that is surely one of the must-see shows in London right now. Andale!
Leave to Remain – 020 8741 6850
Tango Fire – 020 7863 8222
Barney Efthimiou
