From performing dogs to light opera, with magic, comedy and cross-dressing in between, British music halls were designed to embrace a wide range of performances. So, argues Nell Frizzell, don’t be surprised that a Victorian venue like Wilton’s Music Hall can make the leap from modernist poetry to musical paganism....
Last week I platformed down to Wilton’s Music Hall to frolic with Wild Beasts.
The last time I entered those weathered walls it was to watch Fiona Shaw perform TS Eliot’s The Waste Land as a one-woman show. From a single spot-lit recitation to a five-piece musical immersion? That’s the power of the music hall, my friends.
I was initially introduced to Wild Beasts by cutting out 300 pictures of their singer’s face in two days. You should see me with a pair of blades – I make Wesley Snipes look like Kirstie Allsop.
But this wasn’t just an exercise in high-speed stalking; I was helping my boyfriend make the band a stop-frame animation and, in a moment of terrifying clarity, he worked out that the five-minute video was going to take roughly 50 hours and 5,760 pieces of paper. So, it was all hands on deck. Or, in my case, all hands on Hayden.
Watching the Kendal Beef Cakes perform on stage is always an interesting experience, especially after I swore to “never look at this man’s face ever again”. It was made all the more interesting by its contrast to The Waste Land.
Now, I’ll admit it: a 434-line collection of modernist poetry from 1922 doesn’t exactly scream ”one-woman show” to me either. Luckily, the moment Shaw walked out in a vest, sweat patches, no make-up, a single spotlight and an acting-free “April is the cruellest month”, I knew things were going to be fine.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, when it comes to the performing arts, I usually have about as much stamina as a cat in an oven. So, it was with some trepidation that I approached the idea of a “full gig”, even one in such a theatrical setting. I am, after all, the woman who walked out of a weeping crowd of Portishead fans at ATP to shoot zombies on a £1-per-minute arcade game.
However, as Wild Beasts strummed, swung and swayed through their set, I was reminded that even in their most noodley, self-absorbed, masturbatory mode, most bands change song at least every five minutes.
Ever since David Bowie walked on stage as a gender-bending alien glam pirate, bands have been gaily straddling the divide between music and theatre. Compared to the stripped-back, spot-lit intensity of The Waste Land, The Wild Beasts created a richly cinematic musical mood, of the type usually associated with Thom Yorke or Brian Eno. Their Kendalian cousins British Sea Power’s pagan stage invasions by animals, vines and dancing trees are positively bacchanalian. Likewise, Scandinavian master of the surreal Fever Ray (aka Karin Dreijer Andersson) combines costume, character and music on stage to create a multi-disciplinary mind-warp. Even Take That, with their mum-wetting Circus tour, brought a certain theatrical A-game to an otherwise buttock-numbing array of Manc hits.
Of course, live music and theatre are very different beasts. But, as a drama queen, I am always thrilled to find a venue that can adapt to both. And with its twinklingly-lit interior, tucked-away grandeur, plaster-peeling cosiness and echoing acoustics, Wilton’s is one such venue.
Could do with a couple of zombie arcade games, though.
To find out more about the Save Wiltons campaign and for full listings, visit their website.
More from Upstaged
Upstaged: Reading
Upstaged: Time
