Tits & Teeth—a retrospective of a dazzling career. And indeed it is!
Thick & Tight, led by Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry, is touring the UK with Tits & Teeth, with all the best bits of their back catalogue, and they arrived in Newcastle at Dance City for, sadly, only one performance. What an extraordinary performance it is, with its mix of humour, irony, sarcasm, political bite, love and laughs all through drag, dance, gesture and lip-syncing.
Tits & Teeth is a variety act made up of solos and occasional duets, all portraying well-loved or less well-loved famous people. With minimal staging and simple lighting, the focus is on these cultural icons in all their absurdity, charm and also lack of charm, starting with Twiggy, performed by Harry Alexander. Every solo is introduced beforehand with a projected iconic image and basic information. The performers, cleverly and sometimes hilariously costumed, accompanied by a mix of speech and eclectic music from Dietrich, via punk to John Cage offer us glimpses, often extremely acute, of these figures.
The show started a little hesitantly and the audio quality was not up to standard—audience members struggled to hear all the Twiggy speech. However, things quickly picked up with Hay-Gordon and Perry as Barbara Cartland. Costumed in pink by Tim Spooner, the outfit mischievously includes a dog, and Cartland's outdated views are wickedly exposed.
Chillingly brilliant is Vidya Patel’s Winston Churchill. Patel is a well-established dance artist, and this solo belongs in a class of its own. It’s a performance with a wide range of physical and emotional twists and turns, exposing Churchill’s and others' right-wing views; it combines humour, bite and complex and rapid dance, including foot stamps and circling the stage, transforming the Indian dance style of Kathak and putting it in a unexpected context. Skilled, edgy and funny and frightening all at once.
Alexander’s Andy Warhol is a superb, complex, dark, nuanced and powerful piece both in terms of the choreography and his dancing and persona.
Marlene Dietrich, performed by Edd Arnold, also brings surprises, with Dietrich's beauty and composure undermined by a solo of anger, rage and hedonism performed to a compilation of music including electro music group Gilla Band.
"Ra Ra Rasputin" performed by Oxana Pancheko was a real crowd pleaser!
The show felt incredibly short—it is such fun and the performers are all at the top of their game, particularly Hay-Gordon with his beautiful, old fashioned ballet technique and mobile features and Perry with her sharp, piercing gaze, brilliant stage timing and crisp modern dance technique. Their finale piece, an imagined meeting between avant-garde composer John Cage and musical theatre legend Elaine Paige, is so witty, full of fast transitions and actually full of love that it’s a mini-masterpiece, bringing lots of laughs.
This was my first encounter with the company and they are very, very good and a joy to watch.
Thick & Tight sold out at London International Mime Festival 2023 with justification; a unique company of high level performers bringing laughter, wit and some real political eye-openers. Expect surprises, be entertained, gasp at their skill; the audience gave them a standing ovation.