Ever wondered what came first, the chicken or the egg? We all have, but I’d safely bet not a single one of us has ever conjured up the bizarre and madcap answers on show at this experimental, exciting and quite simply bonkers cabaret.
This punky, zany show is a perfect fit for the anarchic, rebellious Soho Theatre
Created and hosted by Paulina Lenoir, Fool’s Moon features a new line up every show of the UK’s most exciting cabaret performers. The night I attended we were treated to a smorgasbord of music, burlesque, interpretive dance, alien drag and queer comedy. Not to mention a barrage of shoe puns.
The costumes were extravagant, the characters broad, and the accents unidentifiable. But the friendly audience engagement, relentless pace and top-notch sound, lighting and stage management kept the show on the road and transformed what could have been quite a cliquey, intimidating space into somewhere warm and welcoming. Not knowing what was coming next felt exciting rather than worrying!
Which was just as well, as 'next' included two Lycra clad ladies singing a pitch perfect hymnal to the joy and trauma of child birth, a magician who pulled a dove from her hat and turned it into a vagina, and a woman with a knife slicing fruit out of her bottom.
My highlights were the soap-operetta of middle-class mid-life crisis in which a hen-pecked husband betrays his wife for luscious neighbour Judy, and the brilliant Brad News parodying the sadistic side of office politics.
The humour is hit and miss, with about half the jokes really hitting the mark, but this punky, zany show is a perfect fit for the anarchic, rebellious Soho Theatre. It’s off the wall, innovative and risk-taking, and London sorely needs playgrounds like this to find the next generation of comic talent. The room was fizzing with youthful energy, the type of atmosphere I associate with the early days of The Comedy Store. It felt like you could be in on the ground floor of the next Rick Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Alexi Sayle or French & Saunders. Fool’s Moon might be very far from the beaten track, but it’s a welcome detour.
