Will Gracie’s hideously self-indulgent cabaret act is a test of patience for any audience member who sits through the entire achingly unfunny 50 minutes. Needless to say there were a couple of audience members who had had enough and headed to the nearest exit at the sign of yet another video of Gracie dancing in his hot pants on a static-filled 80s video of Top of the Pops.Gracie begins the show with an awkward rendition of the Wonder Woman theme tune, and he goes on to tell us of his obsession with the camp heroine when he was a child. This begins a long, drawn out process of talking about all his favourite things from his childhood with the occasional very weak joke thrown in for good measure. He also gives us renditions of some of his favourite songs from the 80s and tries unsuccessfully to get the audience to clap and cheer along. It gets tired very quickly. There is going to be a very limited audience for this show: those who are easily pleased by remembering something long forgotten from the 80s, and perhaps a handful of gay bears who are a little more forgiving of the shows flaws. For the rest of us it feels that you are sitting in Gracie’s bedroom, uncomfortably watching him singing along to his favourite CD’s, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, he brings out the home videos. I’m sure Gracie will be very pleased to have me highlight that he was a backing dancer for the likes of Kylie, Pink and various other pop singers at one point in his life. He was also in a Nescafé advert. So, naturally he presumes that because the audience has parted with their hard-earned cash that they must all be here to watch him in an endless number of videos of his career. The name dropping becomes embarrassing because Gracie doesn’t actually have any interesting stories to talk about. As you struggle to figure out which dancer he is in the videos and then come to realise you are sitting watching a Nescafé advert, it makes you wonder, what do I care?
