You enter a bar. Slow, sexy jazz playing in the background. The place is intimate, reminiscent of a sixties, bohemian lounge. It almost feels as though it should be filled with cigarette smoke and we should all be wearing berets and dark glasses. You're lulled into the sense that you are about to see some straightforward, easy listening, jazz. Sure enough, welcome to the stage the obligatory, smoky-eyed lady, surely about to crack out some sexy solo or another.... Oh, how wrong you are.This show defies all expectations. Throw predictability out of the window! The girl instead launches into a punchy, comic introduction on how to make a Long Island Iced Tea and immediately the audience are put at ease with the naturally funny delivery she gives. Then Peter Straker powerhouses onto the stage and instantaneously we're transported to an old school speakeasy. Singing with every inch of his being Straker puts absolute raw emotion into his performance, constantly maintaining a superb connection with the audience using full on eye contact you just can't escape. Perfectly articulated, you hear every word of every song, obviously due to over 40 years experience in Musical Theatre and his characterisation in every number was without fault. I'm reminded of Broadway's Joel Grey, such is the standard and quality of Straker's, quite sincerely, EPIC performance. Are we all sitting comfortably? Then we'll change it up again. This show never let's your attention waver, there is simply no time to be bored. Straker is backed by the truly astounding father/daughter duet of Peter and Rebecca Brewis who flit between instruments, singing and comic interjections with an ease you can't help but envy. The three have a cohesion rarely seen so blatantly on stage and together they create a show that literally held me either awestruck or doubled over laughing. They fondly satirize their own genre with a quirkiness that could be irritating but instead is put across so beautifully that it become endearing.I have absolutely NOTHING bad to say about this performance. This is one of the best shows I believe I have ever had the pleasure of attending. Straker's outstandingly divine voice soars with a power and vocal range that is out of this world and with the utterly random juxtaposition of well played music and natural, boundary-pushing comedy, Early Long Island Iced Tea deserves recognition and sell out audiences. Needless to say, I will definitely be paying this hilarious, yet super-talented, trio a visit again soon, and this time I'm sitting near the front just to get closer to perfection.
