REVIEW: Pink Fringe: La Poule Plombee

Cabaret Whore Presents

La Poule Plombee

Pink Fringe

Tortured French chanteuse La Poule (the frumpy pigeon) sings of Anglo-French relations. Taken from Cabaret Whore, written and performed by Sarah-Louise Young. La Poule Plombée, has terrified and charmed audiences around the world. This will be her first solo piece, featuring brand new comic and bittersweet songs written by Sarah-Louise Young and Michael Roulston.

La Poule is the triumph of self-delusion, she’s a dangerously unstable mix of abandoned Norma Desmond, a soupcon of young gifted Streisand some hefty dollops of Little Eddie from Grey Gardens, all folded into the fragile body of a falling apart Minnelli it’s a heady frothy explosive intoxicating stunning slow-mo car crash mix of ego, talent and style collapsing like a soufflé when the oven of reality has been opened too fast.

La Poule hold us hostage to her talent, we are captives for her love, slaves to her rhythm, worshipers of her voice. She gives us no choice-literary, that knife is there to make sure we don’t leave, because they all leave her in the end. La Poule is superb, her narrative tension never slacks, the fourth wall is pushed out and pulled back in again, there are hints of dreadful things, and unborn dreams that slop and wallow in the unsaid margins of the stage and so so many tears, mostly for herself it must be said, and the wretched life of living in the shadow of the hated Piaf….

Sarah-Louise Young has to be one of the most talented songsmiths I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a long time, her rhythms are exact, delicious, and meta, it’s hard work to make a comedy French accent work for an hour, but here its done with aplomb, panache and great wit. The lyrics are electric and although endlessly tongue in cheek hold real emotional tension and it’s a luxury to hold the trembling wonder of a reflective childhood song being woven into the mythology of growing up with a pet pig in a butcher’s shop with an anorexic mother and pleasing her father with the flenching knife. Prime pathos turned into a tasty string of bathosausage. Her rhyming of daughter with slaughter while tears flowed down her cheeks is my high point of the Fringe this year, thanks you La Poule for reminding me of how good a show can be.

She was fucking amazing! A delightful deconstructive Diva!

They were astonishingly connected and as a duo worked together to ensure the show flowed to its heartwarming sing a long an encore end.

I could gush more, but would urge you to go yourself and catch this delightful deconstructive wonderfully fun and scary performer live. Cabaret Whore at the Marlbough is a superb end to a superb Pink Fringe and I’d like to shout ‘Encore,     please more…..’

See full details of Cabaret Whore or to book tickets for tonight’s performance, which I would recommend you do NOW!

See more of this astonishingly talent writer and singer here