Devised and performed
by Analisa Bell
Musical director Mia Brine
With Rhoda Lopez and Laura
Hopwood
Downstairs at the Maj
11 – 14 July 2012
You’ve got to hand it to
Analisa Bell.
I doubt even her most
ardent fans (and she seems to have plenty of them) would claim she’s got one of
the great voices, or that the shows she puts together downstairs at the Maj
have any particular insight or wit, but there’s something about her that wins
you over.
Maybe it’s her utter lack of
pretension, the obvious pleasure she gets in being able to do the things she
does, her wide-eyed ordinariness, that does the trick. Maybe it’s also her
canny instinct for her audience that you have to admire, even if you don’t
share their enthusiasm.
But let’s be frank. This
little show, inspired, it seems, by an unexceptional two weeks' holiday in
Paris, is a barely sustainable vehicle for Bell, and nothing she does in
performance lifts it above a sort of musical slide night.
