Guess what, boys – there was a time when the very word ‘cabaret’ was spat with contempt, even at the height of Liza Minnelli mania! How come? Well, the movie, darlings, was released in 1972, only to encounter far more seductive competition – Ziggy (David Bowie) Stardust himself! Frankly, anyone under 40 puked at Liza’s back-dated bump ‘n’ grind, then exclusively seen as Judy Garland grandma garbage!
How times change. Nowadays, the word implies razor-edge, cultural urbanity, but stared at forensically, it’s still the same old rag-bag tat; knackered burlesque, dodgy circus wannabees and laboured, Joel Gray clones. Ho-hum, so dumb, but peek closer still-like a gynaecologist on crack-and there’s a twisted, cabaret underworld sprouting between the complacent cracks.
Screw mutated music-hall and varicose vaudeville, the vibe that floats ten thousand, rapidly drowning burlesque boats; London’s fiercest, Edge cities are patterned after soirees, darlings. And no, we’re not talking tea and polite crumpets on Sunday afternoon, but the life-or-death panache orgies immortalised in the art-house flicks Ridicule and Carrington.
Sure, the salon scene began in 18th Century Paris, awash with stoned poets and charismatic, nut-job visionaries, but soon morphed into mass, artistic bungee-jumps. Picture the scene; each bohemian present frantic to buff or destroy themselves on the tightrope of artistic, often sexual, excess!
And that, my dears, is what’s stunningly realised each month at Richard Strange’s legendary, recently resurrected Cabaret Futura. A furiously surreal lucky-dip, it’s Royston Vasey meets Banksy, the brainchild of hugely charismatic, six foot six host Richard Strange. Once a 70s rock star fronting the acclaimed Doctors Of Madness, he’s since flowered like a psychedelic jungle into actor, raconteur, author and general Renaissance man, with a space dedicated to the beautifully unhinged and determinedly magical.
And the average night? As unpredictable as ketamine on a rollercoaster, from poets to human orchestras, singular freaks of artistic nature and literary perversions you’d wade in the blood of governments for. Christ, who needs the withered genitals of coy, burlesque posers? I’ll suck deeply on the strange any time!
• Cabaret Futura hosted by Richard Strange is at The Paradise, 19 Kilburn Lane, Kensal Rise, London W10 4AE on Monday 15th October and Monday 19th November.
• Tickets and further information: www.richardstrange.com
• Richard curates Cabaret Apocalyptica for The Tate Britain, Millbank, London on Sunday 4th November.
