Bourgeois and Maurice // NNF2012, The Spiegeltent - 11.05.12
From start to finish, the show was naughty and delicious. Which are about the only dietary requirements for a Friday night, don’t you think? - Emma reviews the late-night Spiegeltent show...
Cabaret is a term fraught with uncertainty. It’s about as prescriptive as demanding a ‘smart casual’ dress code. While uncertainty in the clothing department may simply cause a confusion of pyjama-cravat combinations, ambiguity in the entertainment world can invoke some cynicism. Cynicism is a hard mistress to keep entertained however when your cabaret home for the evening is the enchanting Salon Perdu, the travelling Spiegeltent that finds its home in Chapelfield Gardens; when the ‘tent’s in town, there’s an excitable buzz – it’s like another world bubbling alongside our city standards, and tonight it’s being packed to the rafters for the sold out cabaret show from Bourgeois and Maurice.
Engineered siblings, Georgeois Bourgeois and sister Maurice Maurice take to the Spiegeltent stage with Maurice tinkling the ivories while Bourgeois whips us a rapport with us, the audience, establishing himself as a character who’d fit the bill as Rupert Everett’s estranged bitchy cousin. The duo hold the stage with such glamour, Maurice gliding gracefully up and down the octaves in a costume that makes her look like those old pink and black Licorice and Aniseed sweets. And frankly you just want to lick her.
They jump straight into their repertoire of songs with not much let-up in pace throughout, winning over the entire audience by about 3 songs in. The first song that holds particular resonance with the Norwich crowd, ‘Retro’ forces us to take a keen look at ourselves – with the tongue-in-cheek line ‘Everything looks better in retro’, we can have a laugh at ourselves as a city where we’d probably pay an extra £25 quid for something that was considered ‘Barnardo’s-chic’. The song even comes with its own scat section, which really sets the tone for the evening, doo-wapping over the lyrics, “Cuntycuntyfuckshitwankytitflickmybean.” Throughout the myriad of topics, they get political; the David Icke-inpsired conspiracy theorists get a bashing in ‘Lizard Men’; they write a song for children, ‘Ritalin’ which sets out a lesson plan of: narcotics; they re-interpret the Desree’s ‘Life’ to chaotic limits, resulting in Maurice spiraling into a Rihanna-umbrella-ella-ella recanting stupor; and global warming and all that jazz get relegated to the category of abject pish, claiming ‘Change is as good as a rest.’ God it feels good to be at a show where I can embrace my lack of moral core.
With the sensual throb of ‘Tax Me’ – an ode to Maurice’s fetish for accounting and finances - providing the soundtrack, Bourgeois and Maurice shed their outer costumes to reveal a pink shoulder-padded number for Maurice, and for Georgeois, a unitard that looked like Louis Spence and The Green Lantern had collided head-on, resulting in an accident of nuclear sequined fission. Fabulous fission, nonetheless.
The show chugs with speed towards the end, with a two-song encore as an added treat. We’re so in the palm of their hands that by the time they sing the first line of their last song, ‘Have you got a gay daughter…’ – a big slap in the face for over the top political correctness, we’re already working our laughing gear to its full capacity. From start to finish, the show was naughty and delicious. Which are about the only dietary requirements for a Friday night, don’t you think?
Emma Garwood
Cabaret is a term fraught with uncertainty. It’s about as prescriptive as demanding a ‘smart casual’ dress code. While uncertainty in the clothing department may simply cause a confusion of pyjama-cravat combinations, ambiguity in the entertainment world can invoke some cynicism. Cynicism is a hard mistress to keep entertained however when your cabaret home for the evening is the enchanting Salon Perdu, the travelling Spiegeltent that finds its home in Chapelfield Gardens; when the ‘tent’s in town, there’s an excitable buzz – it’s like another world bubbling alongside our city standards, and tonight it’s being packed to the rafters for the sold out cabaret show from Bourgeois and Maurice.
Engineered siblings, Georgeois Bourgeois and sister Maurice Maurice take to the Spiegeltent stage with Maurice tinkling the ivories while Bourgeois whips us a rapport with us, the audience, establishing himself as a character who’d fit the bill as Rupert Everett’s estranged bitchy cousin. The duo hold the stage with such glamour, Maurice gliding gracefully up and down the octaves in a costume that makes her look like those old pink and black Licorice and Aniseed sweets. And frankly you just want to lick her.
They jump straight into their repertoire of songs with not much let-up in pace throughout, winning over the entire audience by about 3 songs in. The first song that holds particular resonance with the Norwich crowd, ‘Retro’ forces us to take a keen look at ourselves – with the tongue-in-cheek line ‘Everything looks better in retro’, we can have a laugh at ourselves as a city where we’d probably pay an extra £25 quid for something that was considered ‘Barnardo’s-chic’. The song even comes with its own scat section, which really sets the tone for the evening, doo-wapping over the lyrics, “Cuntycuntyfuckshitwankytitflickmybean.” Throughout the myriad of topics, they get political; the David Icke-inpsired conspiracy theorists get a bashing in ‘Lizard Men’; they write a song for children, ‘Ritalin’ which sets out a lesson plan of: narcotics; they re-interpret the Desree’s ‘Life’ to chaotic limits, resulting in Maurice spiraling into a Rihanna-umbrella-ella-ella recanting stupor; and global warming and all that jazz get relegated to the category of abject pish, claiming ‘Change is as good as a rest.’ God it feels good to be at a show where I can embrace my lack of moral core.
With the sensual throb of ‘Tax Me’ – an ode to Maurice’s fetish for accounting and finances - providing the soundtrack, Bourgeois and Maurice shed their outer costumes to reveal a pink shoulder-padded number for Maurice, and for Georgeois, a unitard that looked like Louis Spence and The Green Lantern had collided head-on, resulting in an accident of nuclear sequined fission. Fabulous fission, nonetheless.
The show chugs with speed towards the end, with a two-song encore as an added treat. We’re so in the palm of their hands that by the time they sing the first line of their last song, ‘Have you got a gay daughter…’ – a big slap in the face for over the top political correctness, we’re already working our laughing gear to its full capacity. From start to finish, the show was naughty and delicious. Which are about the only dietary requirements for a Friday night, don’t you think?
Emma Garwood
