Showbiz! is a variety entertainment and performance art night inspired by the 1980s Alternative comedy scene, Victorian Music Hall, and Pheonix Nights. Hosted by performance artist Liberty Hodes, the event returns to The Star & Shadow, Newcastle on Thursday 23rd October.
Ahead of the event, Liberty tells us about the top 5 inspirations behind Showbiz
1. The Young Ones – And anything made by the adjacent 1980s London alternative comedy collective The Comic Strip. I remember when my mum bought me the young ones on VHS when I was in year 8 and said “here I think you’ll like this”, I watched it repeatedly and it soon became my entire world. I would sit at school in near tears imagining my house burning down and my precious The Young Ones tapes succumbing to the flames. There was something about their parodies of dominant subcultures in relation to the political unrest of Thatcher’s Britain and the kaleidoscopic tangents the show would follow; an under-stairs cupboard play acted out by puppets of brooms and dust cloths, a segway into a song by Madness or Dexy’s Midnight Runners. The Young Ones to me is the blueprint for the best of alternative comedy, experimental, surreal, surprising and silly!
2. Pheonix Nights – Peter Kay’s iconic sitcom about a working men’s club in Bolton which features a wide programme of variety entertainment such as Bingo, Clairvoyance, Singing and more. At the end of each episode there is an auditioning act, which is usually some sort of absurd or disastrous variety offering such as a magician who’s pigeon gets stuck in a rotating fan. It is probably the funniest tv programme to exist and affectionately captures a genre of live entertainment which is seen less and less. Sometimes when I am sad I watch videos of club host Jerry st Clair, especially him singing Brim Full of Asha.
3. Stairway To Stardom – A New York Public Access Television show that ran from 1979 to the early 1990s, hosted by Italian-Brooklynite Lounge Singer Frank Masi. The Format of Stairway To Stardom is that of an Amateur Talent Show executed with gusto and earnestness. In each episode Frank Masi is joined by a number of performers from the communities around him inclreuding singers, dancers, comedians, ventriloquists, and every flavour of variety entertainment you could imagine. In one particularly surreal episode, Gloria Huddle begins her ‘turn’ with a short nonsensical monologue where she talks to a character called “Libby” about recording a singing demo in London before singing a song about calling Jesus on the phone called “operator”. It is truly a bizarre treasure and a really good rabbit hole.
Stairway to Stardom is a delightful celebration of amateurishness, and communities coming together to entertain one another.
4. Elvis Impersonators – There is something unifying and life affirming about taking a universal celebrity such as Elvis Presley and bringing him directly to the people. This summer I was lucky enough to encounter Young Elvis in Great Yarmouth following a night at the circus – it was a thrill! I’m not sure if it was a combination of 1.5 pints of beer and adrenaline but it felt like there was a collective suspension of disbelief and Elvis Presley was really before us, and it was really him encouraging us all to get in a conga line to Viva Las Vegas. I also like that there are many Elvis Impersonators with their own take on The King, and one I would have particularly loved to encounter is of course the late and great Jarrow Elvis, who was immortalised in a BBC documentary.
5. Cabaret – In the opening number of Cabaret, “Wilkommen“, the Emcee welcomes the audience to the KitKat Club by saying “So, life is dissappointing? forget it! … Leave your troubles outside!”. Cabaret is set in a time of significant political unrest, during the later days of the Weimar period, and centres around The Kit Kat Club, a cabaret club which serves a place of respite and safety for outsiders, weirdos and artists. It teaches us the value of performance as resistance and as a place of solace, and the importance of recharging our batteries with collective in person distraction, and that we need for culture to persist the most in times of political uncertainty. I have seen the film repeatedly (but never the onstage musical, which I’ve heard is somewhat more unhinged) and love the variety in musical numbers, the presence of Liza Minelli and of course the Bob Fosse choreography!
