Theatre review: Le Grand Mort

Sex and death have always been uncomfortably linked in people’s minds, and that’s an idea that Stephen Clark’s Le Grand Mort opens with; 85 minutes later I’m not sure it’s made any further point. Clark wrote it as a rare dramatic vehicle for Julian Clary, who plays Michael, cooking pasta and monologuing – in verse – about famous deaths from history. He’s particularly interested in ones with a grotesque story behind the death (despite him debunking the story of Catherine the Great being crushed to death by the horse she was fucking, it gets repeated a number of times,) or those that have either fact or urban legend attached to them about the corpse being subject to some kind of necrophiliac attention. Eventually we’ll find out the source of his obsession is mother issues that go from the Oedipal to the downright Sir Jimmy, but for now he’s focusing on his guest for the evening.

Theatre review: Taboo

A show named after a seedy club gets revived in a site-specific production at a not-entirely-salubrious-looking club in Brixton. Original director Christopher Renshaw, bringing with him an original cast member (Paul Baker as Philip Sallon,) returns to Boy George's autobiographical musical Taboo. It's the early 1980s and straight(ish) aspiring photographer Billy (Alistair Brammer) moves out of his parents' home and in with his Siouxsie-esque girlfriend Kim (Niamh Perry.) The "landlady" is Sallon, and the other residents include a cross-dressing wannabe poet - Boy George (Matthew Rowland.) Billy is our eyes through which to relive a culture that fought against the austerity of a recession under Thatcher by creating flamboyant looks on a shoestring. The fictional Billy's story runs parallel with George's real history with drugs but the show is largely about bringing to the stage some of the iconic figures of the scene.