All sizzling, perverse eroticism, Joe stabs an immediate fish-hook in any watching genitals! Half noir Norma Desmond, half pancake-orange Dale Winton, s/he’s instant love at a first blowjob bite! Gee, no wonder the amputee stump of my half-dead dick spasmed instantly!
Well, wouldn’t yours? The occasion, gloriously, is trans-sister Joe Black’s sumptuous recreation of Weimar-era Berlin’s notorious Eldorado club, an amoral, gender-blender killing field for every possible, heterosexual stereotype!
The ambience is cosy, vaguely sluttish, with the crimson candles on every table immediately suggesting an eager tart’s boudoir and swift, illicit, late afternoon fucks. Wil-kommen – or rather, well-cumming – indeed!
Pleasingly, the audience are similarly dressed to kill, in sultry, Garbo turbans and faux-fox fur stoles, bathed in a constant, background bubbling of vintage German chanson. Shockingly authentic, all that’s missing is crackles on ancient 78rpm gramophone records! But then, why ever expect less than the best from Joe?
Since first encountering his art in 2010, he’s constantly amazed my expectations with virtuoso unpredictability, sharing deviant aplomb with Berlin’s Cabaret der Namenlosen host, Mr. Pustra.
It’s not surprising. Beautiful androgyny is a startlingly powerful drug, which, with the slightest, louche, leisurely sip, completely banishes and dissolves crushingly dull gender embodiments and expectations. Imagine Berlin, 1931, with jaw-dropping transvestites unfurling like vintage, Hollywood goddesses in full sail, and stoned skyscraper-high, nibbling roses dipped in frozen ether! Gee, as Berlin’s chosen drug of choice, it certainly whips and spanks the pants off chronically cut, crap cocaine!
Mercifully, Joe fully embodies pure androgyny – a bewitching smorgasbord of both sexes – sidestepping that recent, lame-as-fuck, trannies with beards craze. Never a good look, it dates all the way back to San Francisco’s Cockettes and Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Jumping Jesus on a cross, who wants hairy builder’s bum cracks spilling out of skimpy, frilly panties? Barely any pervert living, and cod-drag (the technical term for such a visual abortion) simply emphasizes the bricklayer oafishness of the guy doing it. Frankly, it’s Pantomine Dame syndrome, AKA Widow Wankey, and WTF is the appeal of beards, anyways?
They’re just so crassly, in-your-face, uninterestingly…pubic. Oh God, if you must mix a blatant, male signifier with tack drag, use a huge, pink, strap-on dick! At least it’s intensely grab-making, aesthetically pleasing, and a convenient place to hang props on!
Still, Joe – as you’d expect- spits on the blatantly obvious with the contempt it deserves. A well-sussed, well tasty exponent of Commedia del’ Arte farce, he knows his theatrical history backwards, and frequently, vomits it mashed-up Exorcist-style, to fabulously startling effect.
‘I’m the Angela Carter of cabaret!’ he screams, and to prove it, clips his fake nails on with viciously tight clothes-pegs, a masochist’s wet-dream. Never heard of Angela Carter? You poor, unenlightened souls – she’s an ecstasy rush of dark, savage, erudite eroticism, a killer soulmate for Joe!
And the kinks, deliriously, keep on coming. Alternately bellowing like a terminally pissed Glaswegian yob and purring like a post-orgasmic Marilyn Monroe, he mashes up cabaret clichés and standards like a demented, Arabian wizard AWOL from a Disney cartoon. Yes, think Cabaret’s Joel Gray gene-spliced with Matt Lucas in full-on, Little Britain attack mode, and stand back and light the fuse! The result?
Nightmare, bad-trip versions of Mary Hopkin’s ‘Those Were the Days’ and Marianne Faithfull’s scathingly bitter ‘For Wanting You’. Better still, Joe unleashes a show-stopping take on Brecht’s ‘Pirate Jenny’, surely the beautifully poisoned, corrupt core of the show.
Always capricious, however, he undercuts overwhelming, Teutonic angst with a hilarious parody – ‘Nihilist At A Dinner Party’ – sounding like Victoria Wood sixty-nining Kurt Weill! Simultaneously thrilling and disturbing – like all the best party drugs – Joe’s instantly moreish, so darlings, get terminally addicted, ASAP!
Joe Black @ Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
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