Olivier award for La Clique hits the spot
Monday, March 9th, 2009I’m impressed by the spread of this year’s Laurence Olivier awards. Good to see the Donmar’s sensational revival of The Chalk Garden being rewarded in the best actress and lighting categories. Top marks for the championing of Elena Roger, too, as Piaf, a knock-out performance. And the acknowledgement of the RSC’s Histories was more than richly deserved. The full list of victors can be viewed in latestNEWS; but I would single out the success of La Clique at the Hippodrome as Best Entertainment as a suitable riposte to the idea that the Olivier awards panel plays it safe. This melange of avant-garde, new circus and performance art antics has gone from being a cult Edinburgh Fringe phenomenon to a centre-of-town must-see. What a fine rebuke too, the award is, to Westminster Council and its daft, philistine acquiescence in plans to turn the Hippodrome, one of London’s great neglected theatrical glories, into a casino.
For various logistical reasons, to do with printing timetables, a preview feature I wrote for the Telegraph ahead of the London opening last autumn never ran. So here, for your perusal, is the copy - which I hope, despite now being past its sell-by date, will whet the appetites of the uninitiated to go and check out a genuine marvel.
‘I really find it hard to explain how I’ve ended up doing this for a living,’ says Ursula Martinez, flashing a smile and shrugging her shoulders. ‘It’s almost impossible to put into words.’ Struggling to unravel the mystery of her unusual showbiz calling in a public gardens in Dublin, this twinkly-eyed fortysomething, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the comedienne Catherine Tate, then heads into the beautiful mirror-lined Spiegeltent behind her to strip off slowly in front of a whooping, tantalised and gob-smacked crowd.
One thing’s for sure: Martinez works magic whatever her job-description might be. Her foxy routine involves shedding her skimpy outfit as she searches for a handkerchief, which she ‘discovers’ about her person using classic conjuring skills. Her mock-astonished looks, exaggerated pouts and pelvic thrusts help transform a kinky party-piece into an arty tour de force. Later, she will use a lit cigarette to set fire to dollops of flammable cream spread on intimate parts of her anatomy without so much as singeing a nipple - but that’s another story.
If any single performer sums up La Clique’s cheeky, teasing and warm-hearted carnival of unexpected pleasures then it’s probably Martinez - based in London, blessed with Anglo-Spanish roots, but quintessentially a free-spirit. This international brigade of highly accomplished novelty acts, which has been wowing the Edinburgh Fringe and audiences abroad for four years, is finally coming to the West End this week. The plan is that La Clique will re-launch the Hippodrome as an essential entertainment destination after decades off the cultural map and a very chequered recent history. And you know what? They’ll pull it off.
When did London’s regular theatregoers last get to see a world-class contortionist? Zany Norwegian Captain Frodo can pull himself - with much deft slapstick - through the rib-busting confines of a tennis-racquet. Ukrainian beauty Yulia Pykhtina becomes a human whirlwind of hula-hoops, while the English Gents are a strong-man duo who perform incredible balancing acts while wearing business suits and the straightest of faces. Guaranteed to send the ladies into a frenzy, Germany’s David O’Mer is a rippling Adonis who swoops in and out of a water-filled bath on a harness like an aerial Chippendale. Mario ‘Queen of the Circus’ is a winningly camp, leather-clad Freddie Mercury tribute act who juggles balls and lip-synchs in perfect synchronicity to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.
The range of offerings on the bill defies any simple catch-all description: is it new circus, 21st-century variety, postmodern cabaret, neo-burlesque? All of the above, and only a term as nebulous as La Clique will do.
It’s true that London’s cannier thrill-seekers may have already come across Martinez and a few of her kind on the capital’s experimental performance circuit, which has seen a resurgence of cabaret and burlesque over the past 10 years or so. But none of them will have seen it in this context, in a Hippodrome newly reconnected with its glory days. And up until now, La Clique has been almost entirely experienced the world over in the Famous Spiegeltent, one of the last surviving examples of a deluxe, early 20th-century species of travelling dance hall that originated in Belgium.
It’s owned by the Australian producer David Bates, who had the quick good sense to notice that all kinds of disparate acts he was encountering - on the street, in clubs and festivals - needed a home. He’s had the nous again to recognise that the Hippodrome might be best port of call La Clique ever stopped at.
Designed by the legendary theatre architect Frank Matcham, the Hippodrome was one of the wonders of the Victorian Empire when it opened for business in 1900. Originally configured as an aqua-circus, it boasted a 100,000 gallon water tank, filled by the underground river that runs directly below the building, and which must be held at bay by dedicated pumps to this day. Boats could sail in through side-entrances; acrobats could splash down from vertiginous heights above the gods; and the variety bills included contributions from polar-bears and elephants. During its many incarnations, it has played host to such legends as Harry Houdini, Shirley Bassey and Julie Andrews.
‘The Hippodrome has been crying out for something like this for ages,’ says Nick Wright, the venue’s general manager and a man so smitten with the building’s forgotten charms he knows every inch of the place, dusty upper reaches and all. ‘The West End also needs somewhere people can come to after work for a few drinks, perhaps eat, and see some fantastic entertainment, staying around afterwards for an hour or so if they like.’ Acknowledging that the place has had a poor image since it was run as a nightclub by Peter Stringfellow in the Eighties, he explains ‘at one point, we ditched the Hippodrome name altogether because it had become so associated with everything naff and crass.’
With the building’s landlords refurbishing the Grade II listed façade, due for unveiling any week now, people may finally start queuing round the block to get in again, rather than scurrying past it oblivious on their way into Leicester Square. Wright is so confident of La Clique’s success he’s downscaled all the private corporate hires that have been, for the last few years, the venue’s mainstay. Isn’t there just a slight danger, all the same, that the enterprise will belly-flop badly on account of the credit squeeze?
‘Absolutely not’, declares Brett Haylock, Bates’ co-producer and a fellow Aussie. ‘I don’t get worried about those credit crunch headlines in the slightest. La Clique is recession-proof. When times get hard, this is what people are looking for.’ There’s a historical precedent for that, he points out; during the Great Depression the one
art-form that thrived in America was burlesque.
The flip-side, of course, is that La Clique - which is being set up for an open-ended run - becomes so successful it spawns a commercial monster. They’ll be crossing that bridge when they come to it, but the ethos is all about intimacy, high-class and great value. ‘It’s the antithesis to Cirque de Soleil, that has been said of us many times,’ Haylock points out.
Certainly as things stand, La Clique unleashes far fiercer dreams of running away to join the circus than the global juggernaut Cirque de Soleil does. Is there any reason why, so many years after the big variety and music-halls fell out of favour, the form seems to have mutated its way back into the limelight? ‘I do think it could be as simple as the cyclical movement of fashion,’ suggests Martinez. ‘For a while now, we’ve had a very mediated culture. Even with the boom in reality TV, it’s all very controlled. Here nothing comes between the spectator and the experience. It’s absolutely in-the-moment.’
According to her, variety artists, street entertainers and the whole hotch-potch of mavericks, freaks and prodigies have always kept going, it’s just that TV stopped noticing, and after a while, so did most of the rest of us. La Clique in some shape or form has always been there. Only now we’ve realised - as with the neglected Hippodrome itself - that we rather missed it.
La Clique is at The Hippodrome, Leicester Square, London, WC2 tickets: 020 7907 7097; www.lacliquelondon.com
Hippodrome timeline: from live polar bears to white elephant
1900 - 1909: Built for Edward Moss of Moss Empires, the Hippodrome opens boasting a water-circus arena and music-hall. The foyer is rigged up like an ocean liner.
1909 -1951: Now a variety theatre, it stages the Albert de Courville revues, numerous plays and musical comedies.
1951 - 1982: At the start of the Fifties, it plays host to the Folies Bergere revue, then, after a 1957 refit, becomes the Talk of the Town, showcasing legends such as Eartha Kitt, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones and Judy Garland to a wining, dining audience.
1983 - 1993: Leisure tycoon Peter Stringfellow re-opens the venue as a nightclub, installing state-of-the-art discotheque lighting.
1993 - 2008: In the wake of Stringfellow, various corporate leisure groups run the joint but it struggles to sustain any popular affection, and becomes a venue for corporate hire events.
