The Tiger Lillies, Lulu – A Murder Ballad at West Yorkshire Playhouse reviewed by Heidi Waddington …
So here’s the thing. I SHOULD have loved this show. I am exactly the kind of person who the Tiger Lillies have in their fan base: I enjoy genre-defying, grotesque, dark, boundary-pushing work. I’m used to seeing (and enjoying) what other audience members might find hard to stomach. On paper this show has everything I am looking for in a piece of performance – timelessly haunting falsetto-voiced gypsy playing an accordian; men in full make up; songs about peodophilia … all the ingredients of a top night out in my eyes. BUT, and here’s the OTHER thing: The Tiger Lillies left me cold last night. And not in a chills-down-my-spine-guilty-enjoyment kind of way. The Tiger Lillies left me cold in a “meh” kind of way.
Don’t get me wrong, musically, these guys are geniuses: Martin Jacques (accordian, vocals and piano), Adrian Stout (contra bass, theramin and musical saw) and Mike Pickering (drums and all kinds of weird and wonderful perscussive toys) deliver a selection of 20 original songs with a level of expertise and skill that you rarely see – the music is very much the “star” of the piece. It’s distinctive, humorous and dark. The Tiger Lillies are VERY, VERY good musicians. The problem is, they’re NOT very good theatre makers.
The erecting of a physical fourth wall by way of a gauze screen onto which Director/ Designer Mark Holthusen projected images, made it very difficult to “connect” with the character of Lulu. I get it – the gauze and the images projected onto it was supposed to give the piece a filmic feel and to play with the idea of the fourth wall. I get it. But it just didn’t work. Besides which, this isn’t anything new for the Tiger Lillies. Ten years ago I saw their production of Punch and Judy, staged in a huge picture frame. Theatrically they don’t seem to have moved on.
We watched Lulu from a distance, dancing her little socks off. And – although Laura Caldow danced beautifully, is clearly a talented dancer and was giving it everything she had – that bloody gauze was just too much of a barrier. That – coupled with Lulu’s silence (again, I GET it – she doesn’t have a voice. I get it) meant I just didn’t CARE about Lulu. I didn’t connect with her. So much so, that by the time she was torn apart by Jack the Ripper I was a little bored and found her death somewhat tedious (who takes THREE songs to die??) One song asked Lulu: is your death a release? Yes. Yes it is. I’m BORED! Get me to the bar.
There were some lovely moments – a couple of flashes of inspiration when the projection and choreography really “added” something. But for the most part the projected images and the dancing, although accomplished and interesting, were a distraction from rather, than a compliment or addition to, the music of the Tiger Lillies. It was all a bit disconnected. All the elements worked on their own but when put together, they seemed to be fighting with each other for the audience’s attention.
Lulu – A Murder Ballad misses the mark: the theatrical equivalent of “could do better”. If you’re going to sing about perverts, cunts and cocks and open a piece with a song about child rape screeching “show them your tits” over and over then – quite frankly – there should be tits! For all that The Tiger Lillies insist their work is extreme and provocative and shocking, they play it safe here. The applause was polite, but certainly not rapturous. I got the impression I wasn’t the only “meh” in the audience.
My advice? Buy the album. Listen to it at home. I bet it’s really good. For all it claims to be “an uncompromising musical and visual drama”, on stage it just doesn’t quite manage it.
What a nasty little show this is. Misogynistic in the extreme, theatrically dull, and – worst of all – boring. The Tiger Lillies just go on repeating themselves – cheap shocks, faux-thirties Berlin, and – admittedly – superb musicianship. But this is another lazy piece of work. Shoddy and dumb-headed.
Couldn’t agree more with this review very meh, wish I had walked out half way through like a friend did the Thursday before. Too much high pitched singing which I couldn’t hear properly anyway being drowned out by loud drumming. Btw can anyone tell me what was the point of Egypt!