The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, London N16 8JH | Bookings 020 7254 4097 | Enquiries 020 7993 3643 | Email Info at Vortex

November 2007
gig reviews

The Necks
Porpoise Corpus
The Chris Lowe Quintet
Evan Parker, Barry Guy
 Paul Lytton, Peter Evans
Ian Shaw
Radioplay
Fraud
Hih
Zoe Rahman Trio
Robert Mitchell
 and Corey Mwamba
Billy Jenkins and
 Steve Morrison

Gig reviews archive

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 2007 gig reviews
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November gig reviews by Chris Parker

Radioplay

Sunday 18 November

An unusual treat on Sunday evening (18): Flywheel Productions' Radioplay, performed by Ed Gaughan, with an onstage jazz trio who occasionally joined in the action: Christine Tobin, Phil Robson and Dave Whitford.

The play begins with Gaughan as a hilariously lugubrious National Express coach driver on an overnight trip from Land's End to 'up-London', but this is merely a framing device Ì courtesy of the fact that said driver narrates a shaggy-dog story involving a US radio-show-pioneer forebear to while away the five-hour journey Ì for a series of sketches drawing on everything from James Cagney movies and the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett to the story of jazz, from Duke Ellington to Chet Baker.

The quickest way of describing the actual substance of the play is by comparing it to a series of Lenny Bruce sketches ('Father Flotsky's Triumph' most obviously influential) set in a loose narrative structure inspired by the heyday of American entertainment radio; along the way Gaughan manages to portray Ì like Bruce, moving from one to another with bewildering rapidity and stunning skill Ì an extraordinary gallery of amusing grotesques, from unscrupulous managers to thuggish hoodlums, from a stern but loving 'Top of the world, Ma!'-type matriarch (knitting a picture of Christ crucified, naturally) to Chet Baker himself, this last incidentally showcasing Gaughan's perfectly acceptable jazz-crooner's voice and guitar-playing ability (and allowing him to get in a wickedly gratuitous dig at Jamie Cullum).

A thoroughly enjoyable evening Ì and one allowing Christine Tobin not only to perform a series of standards, 'Sophisticated Lady' and 'Tangerine' among them, with her customary flawless elegance and uniquely affecting power, but also to demonstrate considerable presence as an actress. The play clearly entranced a packed club, and cries out to be shown on TV to a larger audience.

 

 

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