Fraff was billed as a ‘poetry night for people who don’t like poetry’. Devised by renowned gay performance artist Scottee, a packed crowd of mostly young-ish in-the-knows filled the circular tables atop the Richmix. Scottee introduced the night with a bit of easy banter between him and selected audience faces, easily arousing many laughs and proving his professionalism as a confident and likable host – even through the blasé bravado of screaming at unwitting bystanders not to stand in his spotlight.
The aim of the game was that everyone would write poems, ‘Haiku-Ma Tata’, as the night progressed and as the advertised acts went through the sets, there would be more interaction of the audience as Scottee read out their efforts. Whilst pens were readied across the room, the first of the performance poets took to the stage: an enigmatically anoraked figure named Barbara from Peckham.
Wearing glasses and her hood pulled up throughout, Barbara proceeded to give us some of her very worst poetry. There was an element, I thought, with this act that, although often funny, could be quite off-putting to anyone who really wanted to read out their work and was worried at being lampooned in this manner. Given that this was the first act, I began to feel a vague animosity towards a seemingly nasty piss-take night that seemed geared towards tearing people apart.
However, as the evening progressed, this initial reaction was revised as too quick and fallacious. A rather magnificent drag queen gave a poetic rendition of the Stonewall riots to Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ backing track – and when a ball of scrunched paper was thrown at her for adopting a silly poetry voice (encouraged by Scottee), she snapped ‘darling, I’m a classically trained actor, and I’m talking in this voice because I do drag from playing Lady M on stage!’
Jonny Woo shone as ever as an aged poetess from the West Country, Bryony Kimmings was hands-down hilarious, and both Winnifred on the open-mic and Scottee’s brave young Roundhouse protégé Izzy indicated there was an element of nurturing new voices to the night after all. Well, of course, there was, because Scottee after all plucked up the courage to read his own poetry out before us as well: ‘if this goes well, I’m a poet,’ he said, ‘if it goes badly, I’m a performance artist’. He was undoubtedly talented at both, as we laughed through the week days with him, until a pin could be heard to drop at his poem on homophobia.
All in all, a fun and wonderful night, with a prevailing atmosphere of encouragement and good-will throughout.
• The Richmix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA
Friday 12th September
• The next ‘Fraff’ will be on Friday 5th December at the Richmix Cinema.
