At last! Some much needed cabaret! I hadn't heard of Ms. Bellini before I saw her listing on the Fringe website but felt I would need my cabaret/burlesque fix by this point in the schedule and with the absence of my normal go-to late-night chanteuse I'd been casting around for shows to fill that not-inconsiderable gap. Ms. Bellini seemed to fit the bill.
And what an enthusiastic and charismatic performer she turned out to be. The show is loosely based around a series of anecdotes, leading into belting out a pop/torch-song classic and generally doing something tastefully rude (shedding some clothes, peeling and eating a cucumber).
Her backstory is touching. She had been in a very serious car-crash some years before - so serious she was bed-bound for a year, utterly dependent on others and being told she would end up in a wheelchair needing constant care. Ms. B thought "fuck that!", and the fact she was standing in front of us singing and dancing was testament to that (not to mention good medical care I'd imagine). She took us through her injuries and the steel rods in both femurs. The penultimate song before a very brief clothes change interval (during which three of us were given inflatable saxophones and asked to mime to a sax solo in Duran Duran's Rio - hey, I enjoyed it) was a staggeringly touching piece - I couldn't identify the song but it was very Portishead-like - where Ms. B mimed a series of excruciating contortions representing the crash and its immediate aftermath. After it concluded and the small audience sat somewhat overwhelemed she cheerfully exclaimed, "Bet you weren't expecting that!"
She was very philosophical about the crash now. She had been in an abusive relationship for many years and the crash and the forced self-contemplation afterward allowed her to end that relationship and decide she wanted to embrace performance, regardless of what the Doctors said. Through this she met a young man, fell in love and they have been happily married since.
I know the last couple of paragraphs make it sound more an existentialist meditation than a cabaret show so I should emphasise that the whole thing was immensely entertaining. Ms. B was a bundle of energy and wildly charismatic, she belted out songs as if her very life depended on it, hurled out lots of cheeky humour and innuendo and despite it being a small crowd generated a lot of atmosphere. A great sing-a-long finale to Total Eclipse Of The Heart brought the end of a thoroughly enjoyable show, albeit one with a pretty serious undercurrent.
I'm glad I came across Ms. B and shall look out for more from her. A hugely fun and unexpectedly poignant 4/5 stars ...
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