CABARET: Malu van Leeuwen
‘DOES anyone have a serviette? I’m doing what ladies do — glowing.” A napkin makes its way to the stage; Irit Noble delicately wipes the dewy pearls from her face and neck. “If anyone wants this they can have it for five bucks.” No takers, but a generous round of applause for the impromptu dialogue.
It’s one of those balmy nights in Cape Town and Noble herself, performing Upstairs at Elaine’s, is looking decidedly sultry. Thirty seconds into Boys an’ Ivy and one of my companions is already coveting her gossamer- thin designer blouse and the silky white brassiere underneath it. Make no mistake, Noble’s intuit-o-meter is switched on. “Oh yes,” she says. “If I were any other kind of performer I would take it off and have done with it. But it cost me a fortune and I’ll get every cent’s worth. I’m a compulsive shopper.”
Repartee aside, Noble’s latest repertoire features a clutch of cover versions interspersed with a few “Boys an’ Ivy originals”. True to the torchsong mode of cabaret, there is less pathos than exaggerated reflection on elusive, lost love. Starting with Suzanne Vega’s Calypso and ending with Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, Noble runs through the gamut of female stereotypes: woman as goddess, doormat, dominatrix. Noble is no Danielle Pascal; she’s Poison Ivy — the devil woman teasing our sexual sensibilities.
She’s at her best, however, when she takes the mickey out of popular entertainment (herself included). A definite highlight of the show was her suitably cheesy send-up of Wet Wet Wet’s nauseating snogging anthem, When Love is All Around. Even better was her slack-jawed, be-scarfed interpretation of Elvis: “Little Richard once said: ‘If Elvis was the king of rock’n’roll, then I am the queen.'”
This was one of the few references to the camp implications of the show’s title. As it turned out, the “boys” refer to her backing band: three musos with the odd twitch-reflex of a smile who looked as though they’d feel slightly more comfortable playing in a library. But that’s how good they were: they let Queen Irit steal the show.
Predictably the real boys were parked in the audience, hungry for flirtatious banter coupled with bump’n’grind. Noble measured out small doses, when she felt like it.
Boys an’ Ivy lasts for all of an hour. After that, it was off to the balcony to join the flock of nicotine addicts — Upstairs at Elaine’s, for all its 1930s smoking-room ambience, is a smoke-free zone. I didn’t even get a chance to light my cigar. So much for trying to be one of the boys.
Boys an’ Ivy runs until February 4