From the start, you know that Tomás Ford isn’t your ordinary late night showman. It’s not just because he near deafens you with a wall of live-mixed electro punk, but that he chooses to say hello to the whole audience and shakes their hands, individually — a way of checking out who he might play with later on, perhaps? Whatever his reasons, it’s a signal that things are just about to get a whole lot weirder — that he’s cut off the sleeves of his silk dressing gown.
Given the title of the show, it’s clear from the off who holds the dominant position in this particular relationship. Any audience must simply accept when hinted-at psychological histories threaten to derail what Ford allegedly wants to be an evening of nice songs — including an energetic cover of Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out of my Head”. Yet when, in a fit of apparent distraction, he bounds onto one of the audience’s tables, you can’t help but see he really appreciates the genuine yelp one woman gave.
Ford is undeniably physically fearless; there are no half-measures with him, whether he’s wooing a girl or hugging a man at the back as an apology for inappropriately suggestive behaviour mere moments before. There’s no doubting Ford’s prodigious theatricality — though you can tell he’s more at home in the less formal set-up of late night music venues compared with a traditional theatre. Nor is there any doubt about his ability to woo a crowd to the extent that they’re willing to carry him — literally — above their heads by the close of the evening.
Yet, while there’s a deliciously unsettling sense of melancholy to his show, there are occasions when the sheer volume — both aural and visual — is just too high, too persistent, too unrelenting. Sometimes, even for Mr Ford, less can be more.
