Who needs la Maria and la Audrey, those old bags, when you have the magic trio of Katherine Jenkins (aka Our Queen Of The Mikes) and her gigantosaurus bewbs?
(Darcey Bussellout, who, unlike KJ, once had an actual career in the arts, was there too)
After 18 months of preparation, the Britextravaganza Viva La Diva is finally rawking:
Bussell makes a straight-laced Audrey Hepburn in a take on Funny Face, foil to a brisk (though disgracefully uncredited) Miss Prescott. There's a sultry menace in "The Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and loads of gusto in Jenkins' frothy impression of Doris Day as Calamity Jane in "Deadwood Stage".
Highlights include the colour expressionism of an episode from The Red Shoes in which Bussell reaches delirious heights in the role of Moira Shearer, and Natalie Wood's burlesque striptease routine from Gipsy. Jonathan Cope is the lead male dancer, proving his versatility in a number of roles, while Bob Fosse's hand-twirling, shoulder-shrugging, sexy strutting gets a look-in, too.
The finale with the entire company, an excellent ensemble, is a gorgeous summation of a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Jenkins is a little inhibited as a hoofer and Bussell needs to relax as a chanteuse, but they'll get accustomed to their new roles.
OC is all in favor of weird Broadway-style shows (and we like Luhrmann's weirdykinz Moulin Rouge, too, except for the Nirvana desecration) and Zeus knows media hype and clumsy newspaper writing are Siamese twins; but, really, the only way for Jenkins to take "a brave stab" at la Maria -- and we say this while standing proudly on the Team Tebaldi side -- would have been to travel back in time, steal a steak knife in the Savini kitchen and try to attack la Callas as she was ripping her usual pre-Scala raw meat dinner to shreds, fangs glistening with rapturous joy. Beating the Spice Girls scrawny, Botox'd a$$es in the UK charts, while wearing a really powerful mike, does not even begin to, ahem, cut it.
For our UK readers: the tour opened at The Lowry, Salford (25th and 26th November) and then goes on to the Brighton Centre (29th), Cardiff Arena (1st December), Bristol Colston Hall (5th December), Bournemouth IC (7th Dec), Hammersmith Apollo (11th and 12th Dec), Birmingham Symphony Hall (16th and 17th Dec), Nottingham Royal Centre (20th Dec) and Glasgow SECC (21st Dec).
