Cautionary Tales For Daughters: Tales your mother never taught you
Jermyn Street Theatre,
31st January 2017
Book Tickets
Tanya Holt begins with a likeable enough manner in this one-woman show, accompanied on keyboards and with BVs by her trusty MD, ‘Fred’ (aka Birgitta Kenyon) [Jenny Gould takes this role at some performances]. We wonder – briefly – if we are in ‘Fascinating Aida’ territory, where predominantly ‘light’ material will be offered with one hand, while a not necessarily always metaphorical large gin and tonic will be clasped in the other. We do not wonder for long. Holt rapidly shows more steel than grins in her sharply drawn insights into life and character, grabbing at as many stray musical instruments with which to accompany herself as styles and modes of song, movement, recitation and monologue as the moment seem to demand. Although this is carefully scripted and directed with minute attention to detail, it all feels totally spontaneous and improvised. And dangerous. We might go anywhere with this, and – in her hands – we pretty much do.
After the artfully harmless opener (including a ham parody of ‘My Way’), the song about ‘Sylvia’ in her tower, wondering ‘Where am I, and where are you?’, is altogether too poignantly difficult to be ignored. Then, while easeful patter moves us from one vignette to another, the craftily paced and focussed lighting (uncredited, but perhaps the work of director and contributing writer, Robin Kingsland) tells another story, as does the increasingly worrying videography and screen design by Vesna Krebs. Daniel Dibdin’s additional music enhances that of the author-performer – the arrangements are increasingly bold and surprising, ranging from elaborately exuberant to a barely existent spareness, while Millie Davies’ props furnish the stage space left unfilled by an assortment of musical instruments (when did you last see a revue featuring a hurdy-gurdy, or zither?).
By the time we are through with her tale of the ‘Bad Tattoo’ – a gloriously mocking ‘80s Power Ballad’ – and ‘Gold’, the history of the contemporary ‘helicopter parent’, we know that we are in the hands of a wise intelligence, venturing far beyond the normal limits of coffee-table cabaret. The smart country-and-western ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’ is a splashy tearing apart of gender stereotyping as if delivered by a bitter-sweet Dolly Parton in fragmented meltdown. Next, ‘Daddy’s Girl’ grows organically as a 1930s-style Recitation, almost in the manner of Cicely Courtneidge, but firmly establishing us on ‘the dark side’ of life. Ms Holt’s erudition can throw in a passing helpful reference to Hilaire Belloc (whose volume of the same name, pitched at the admonishing of naughty children between the ages of 8 and 14, appeared all of 110 years ago), but does so in the flattering assumption that we know what she means, without explanation.
And suddenly, we are transported into the retro-folk of ‘A Worthy Man Once In Fayre Garish Towne’, done with the best ‘Celtic Connections’ deadpan, but barely hiding its venom behind the faux 16th-century woodcut illustrations of the grubby kiss-‘n’-tell tabloid romp. This moves neatly into ‘There’s News’, being an epistle dedicated to the joys and snobberies of contemporary childbirth, at the end of which she administers to a grateful audience the epidural of the intermission.
‘Act 2’ (one might almost call it since everything Holt does – be it ever so slight and apparently unassuming – seems such a drama!) begins with ‘Cherry, The Amazing Yo-Yo Girl’, which she adorns with frighteningly realistic fairground ‘barker-talk’. (When they finally get around to staging the first All-Female ‘Carousel’ – and, people, it is only a matter of time – we feel sure who will be top of the list to play ‘Billie’ Bigelow.) This is perhaps Holt’s most Tiger-Lilies-influenced grotesque: a clever, Lisztian Mephisto waltz, dished up for good measure with dollops of the Hungarian Rhapsodies. And then we return to Joyce Grenfell-like Recitation with the hideous history of ‘Arabella Dare’: a warning voice, indeed, directed at real people who take on the wild beast that is The Media and seek to tame it. Elegant ambient sounds then move us into the world of one of her most appealing characters, ‘Chanel, the Label Girl’ – a browse around the seven deadly sins, with the ghost of Lotte Lenya at our elbow.
Abruptly, Holt shifts us to The Little House on the Prairie, where we hear her perfect pioneer woman song: ‘O, Little Grey Hair’ – a wistful blues, which she self-accompanies on the musical saw, a perfectly executed act that Holt makes seem about as comforting and reassuring as playing chopsticks with an angle-grinder. Why is she doing this? You wonder. Who is she, anyway? You think. She seems so plausible, so natural, so uncomplicated, and yet… and yet… and yet… The real Tanya Holt always seems just slightly out of our reach. Elusive and mysterious. Each new number, we subliminally hope, will show us ‘the truth’, and we will know where we stand. But Holt has studied her Cleopatra and Theodora and knows that that is not the way to go.
Even when sozzled, in the lush’s Narration, ‘Can’t Take Your Drink’ (exploring the causes that drive people to dipsomania), the angular ‘sprechgesang’, the incantatory, ‘It’s not OK’, give so little away. We are constantly confronted with the world, and reduced to admitting how little of it we comprehend. Piled on top of this admission comes an aesthetic challenge: a kind of arthouse cantata on designer household appliance and white goods names, given a Peggy Lee swing, with an overlay of a little campy humour. This leads us into warnings against going into dangerous waters: ‘Red Flags Are Flying’, a really generous helping of Steeleye Span and Maddy Prior at her most trenchant, laced liberally with post-echoes of Barbara Dixon. I think.
I mean, there are so many influences and ‘charms’ at work on the bracelet that is this delightfully attractive and astonishing show, one can list them, and still not get anywhere near to getting the how and why they are all there – if, indeed, it is them, and not some simulacrum of them, some shadows of past phenomena, some imagined footnotes to entertainment history or illusory allusions to great creators of the cabaret tradition. For reasons which seem as unaccountable as they are arbitrary, the likes of Jake Thackray seem as present here, as benevolent spirits, as those of Victoria Wood: as we all join in with the closing anthem, ‘Yesterday Is Here Again’, we are horribly aware that there may be an awful lot more truth in the song than we suspect.
And that is Tanya Holt, people. As far as I can tell. If and when somebody gets around to recording her – and someone really, really should – we will play, and replay, re-replay these numbers, and – I suspect – remain always as mysteriously enchanted by them as at our first encounter with them. This is special. And the show is at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 11th February, before launching into a wide-ranging national tour.
