Reviews

The Cheap Flights Tour (tour – Bury St Edmunds, Theatre Royal

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1 March 2012

Way back in the early 1980s, in a performance space carved out of an Islington pub’s upper room – now it seems like another galaxy as well as another time – I reviewed a new all-woman cabaret group called Fascinating Aida. It was sleek, tuneful, blisteringly clever – and had the audience on its side right from the first note to the last laugh.

We were 20 years’ distance from sophisticated West End theatre revues such as Cranks and Pieces at Eight, but this came over as something quite new, not at all retrospective or nostalgic. Now – fast forward the better part of three decades. Co-founder Dillie Keene with Adèle Anderson and new recruit Sarah-Louise Young pack out traditional theatres and cavernous multi-purpose venues with the same sense of style and wit as in 1983.

It’s more elaborate now, of course, with elegant costumes, a sound system, full stage management and subtle lighting. The targets are also up-to-date, from corporate sleaze and political shenanigans to the cut-price airline offers which give the show its title. We wince at the ironies of “Paying taxes” and recognise the implications of “I’m bored” while rejoicing in the pentatonic bite of the cod-Bulgarian folk-song commentaries.

There’s a lot to look at, as well as listen to. Those outfits, for one, Keene’s musical dexterity for another (there are a couple of sequences involving percussion and piano seemingly at the same time as the vocals), the way apparently casual asides to the audience shift the mood from one precisely articulated and perfectly pitched number to the next. It’s more than just clever. It’s entertainment at its best.