Hot on the heels of Perle Noire, Her Majesty’s Theatre hosted British post-punk cabaret act The Tiger Lillies, who are currently promoting their new album Serenade from the Sewer. In many ways this was a much more appropriate show for a former Edwardian Tivoli circuit vaudeville theatre and added some much-needed besmirchment to the somewhat anodyne bourgeois blandishments of its newly renovated interior.
The Tiger Lillies have been around since the late 80s and judging by the audience response have acquired something of a cult following.
The trio – falsetto lead singer Martyn Jacques, who also plays accordion, piano, and the world’s smallest ukeleli; percussionist Budi Budenop; and double-bass player Adrian Stout, who is also a dab hand at the musical saw and theremin – wear grotesque white clown makeup and variegated three piece suits, and look like escapees from a circus (or possibly an asylum or slasher movie like Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse).
The Tiger Lillies review – quick links
Threepenny Opera meets Nick Cave
The Tiger Lillies’ material consists of short songs (mostly ballads) about whores, junkies and melancholics, who mostly come to a tragic end, in an imaginary version of London’s Soho that seems heavily indebted to Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera.
Musically (and to some extent dramaturgically) however they owe more to the likes of Jacques Brel, Tom Waits and Nick Cave.
The band made a big theatrical splash with the 1998 musical Shockheaded Peter, based on the German children’s book Struwwelpeter, followed by The Gorey End (based on the writing and illustrations of Edward Gorey) in 2003. Both indicated their interest in casual violence and macabre whimsy.
Serenade from the Sewer doesn’t have the same theatrical context or musical variety as those two shows (The Gorey End also involved the Kronos Quartet) and I have to admit that after a while I became a bit bored by the musical, lyrical, visual and dramatic sameness and flatness of the material.
The songs were mostly ‘oom-pah-pah’ waltzes or marches, slower or faster as the case may be, with standard accordion or piano chords on the off-beat, and the melodies weren’t all that memorable.
In terms of texture I missed a fourth instrument and found myself wanting to dust off my flugelhorn. My favourite moments involved Stout on the musical saw and especially the theremin, a wonderful and underused instrument from the 1920s which was largely superseded by the synthesiser but is played without physical contact and was here used to haunting effect.
The Tiger Lillies’ lacklustre serenade
The lyrics are similarly standard verse-chorus ballads about similar characters with similar fates. The words and rhymes aren’t all that clever and Jacques’s deadpan delivery and somewhat monotonous falsetto, while initially engaging and amusing, inevitably palls after a while.
I missed the socio-political complexity of Brecht (not to mention the musical complexity of Weill), or the poetic and psychological nuance of Brel or Waits (as well as the latter’s more distinctive vocal persona and richer musical sound-world).
Visually and dramatically there was also little going on apart from some nice clowning from Budenop. About halfway through I found myself imagining video clips or projections to flesh out the (in every sense) skeletal pickings on offer. There wasn’t even any patter between the songs.
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To be sure, there’s always a case to be made for minimalism and allowing space for the imagination of the audience, but here the case wasn’t compellingly made because the basic ingredients weren’t quite strong enough, and the level of energy and commitment from the band (especially Jacques) didn’t inspire me to reciprocate. For my taste, even the most minimal cabaret needs every last ounce of energy from the performer, otherwise it falls flat.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the artistry of Stout’s saw and theremin playing and Budenop’s clowning and drumming, as well as the refreshing sense of gallows humour, which I think we need more of in these dark times.
Indeed, the standout song for me was the encore, Birds Are Singing In Ukraine, a timely reminder of that already half-forgotten but ongoing conflict – and Jacques’s parting ‘Fuck Putin’ was his strongest effort and most committed gesture of the night. More please.
