David Hoyle was serenading the crowd with ‘Maybe This Time’ to the sound of a MRI scanner. Dressed in chic white jacket, sudden ebony shock of a wig, scarlet lipstick and kohl panda eyes – ‘you want to be understated with your makeup otherwise you may end up looking like a clown’ he’d quipped in his show the night before – he was a scare-Tory Snow White for the queer anarchists.
Words by Patrick Cash. Photos by Holly Revell
After his rapturous applause, he had words to Northern drawl about the arts: ‘That was an unoriginal song to an original backing track,’ he stated. ‘Arts subsidies are dying. Creativity and self-expression are now more important than ever. I would tell you what I really think of the people in authority of the arts, but I don’t want you to smash Jonny’s place up.’
Jonny is the masterful performance artist Jonny Woo, and his place is The Glory. In a capital city where the cries are consistently of LGBT venues closing down, and dead-behind-the-mascara drag queens singing David Guetta covers to the profit-minded conservatives of Soho, The Glory is like a fork of glittered lightning slicing onto an algae-covered pond. Here lies the new vortex for all those set adrift when The Joiners closed, and more: for Jonny’s two-tiered venue promises to safeguard queer creativity and self-expression within its sweaty walls.
Dressed as Lou Reed – ‘I am aware my Lou Reed is a bit biker dyke’ – Jonny was a pivotal part of last Friday’s soldout ‘Pussy Faggot – The Second Coming’. Curated by legendary New York cabaret manager Earl Dax, the show brought the crème de la spunk of the Big Apple, including former Warholian superstar Penny Arcade, to mingle with the high-heeled loads of homegrown Big Smoke talent.
We began the evening down in the boudoir-like basement club, where Bourgeois & Maurice were dazzling their sequinned catsuits in the crimson-tinged dark. Bourgeois’ gigantic eyelashes and Maurice’s beehive are an electric draw on the cabaret circuit for their satirical songs squeezed through the urethra of acerbic humour. Modern-day idiocy and snobbery is often their bull’s eye target: ‘I went to to the supermarket the other day, and they’d run out of quinoa, Bourgeois’ / ‘oh no, what did you do Maurice?’ / ‘I took a shit in aisle 10.’ Check out ‘We Want Love’ on YouTube for a particular highlight of their work.
Upstairs on the more grungy, rockstar main gigging floor Penny Arcade treated us to her hosting duties, with her auburn flame of hair and vast mammary glands hooking all into an engaging look. Her message was stark: gentrification killed New York and London was next, she was followed by New York’s wonderful Rachel Mason, who suavely strode the bar in her trilby and velvet vocals, Viva Deconcini, the ever-energetic A Man to Pet, glorious Needles Jones and an intriguing Morris(she) impresario.
Alas, if there was any affirmation needed about the fractured state of ‘LGBT’ in London today then it was the lesbian guitarist who got up to sing a song about having sex in the basement. The assembled gay men instantly lost interest and began acting as if the interval had already been called, chatting, going to the bar and heading for cigarettes. I don’t have enough space here to try exploring the psychology behind this attitude, but our hearts bled like the Green Party for the poor girl, who wasn’t a bad act at all in our humble opinion.
Yet overall this was a spectacle to get the cockles and embers of creativity smouldering back into smoke: an earthy, bodily celebration of being queer, being human and just being brilliant. The Glory is a name chosen aptly, we think; perhaps it’s time our ailing gay scene deserved a bit of glory. David, it’s right to worry about those in authority of the arts, but for the time being, Jonny’s got our backs.
• The Glory, 281 Kingsland Road, Haggerston, E2 8AS. Friday 3rd April.
www.facebook.com/TheGloryLondon
• David Hoyle’s ‘Abracadabra’ is running fortnightly on Thursdays (next show the 16th April) at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 42 Pollard Row, E2 6NB.
