The split of a long-established duo is like a marital divorce. Kit and the Widow were at the top of the sophisticated cabaret league for over two decades until they parted company last year. It’s a hard act to follow, and inevitably comparisons will be made, whatever they each do. Kit is now footloose. Is he looking for a fling, or another permanent relationship? In teaming up with Jamie McConnel he is seeking solace in the arms of an old flame, in that they have known each other and written together on and off for over thirty years.
So does the new team match up to the old one? Kit’s wit is as sharp as ever, the lyrics superlatively crafted in a tradition which stretches through Noel Coward and Flanders and Swann. Much of it is bang up to the minute, with songs about Scottish Independence, Ed Milliband, the sexy Lib Dems, Berlusconi (Ar-sole Mio) and Fifty Shades of Grey, which strays somewhat into Victoria Wood territory. I’d only heard one before, about fighting terrorism with toothpaste, nail scissors, and all the other things which irritatingly get seized at Heathrow. There are some good one liners too: ‘Nick Clegg is half Dutch, so it really should be Nick Clogg.’ There are also two serious songs, which provide welcome contrast, and one, Afghanistan, is deeply moving. It is all the more angry for being so compassionate and so full of the kind of detail which you get from someone who has been there and done his research.
Jamie McConnel isn’t as subtle a composer or pianist as Richard Sissons (the Widow) was, but his work sells the lyrics, and he performs a neat party trick, improvising a composition based on the notes of the name of someone picked out of the audience, as Liszt and Reger did with B-A-C-H. As a singer he could do with a bit more oomph, articulation and projection. Kit too had articulation problems in the patter numbers. They don’t use mikes - Kit is unplugged, which I’m sure is a disappointment to him – and at times the piano drowns the voice. But this was a first night, and it’s an ungrateful acoustic at the Edinburgh Academy. Kit himself shows considerable improvement on the later gigs – less meaningless mugging, more focus, more interesting movement. This seems a relationship of equals, since Jamie has his own space to shine. I’d say it is definitely a relationship which could have staying power.
The show closes with a parody which is hilarious and probably slanderous. If I was a bigwig at Nando’s I’d pay a large amount of money to buy the song and get it out of circulation. As it is, I can’t stop singing it (to the tune of Abba’s ‘Fernando’):
‘There was something in the food that night
That wasn’t right
At Nando’s’
