Review by Steve Bennett

6pm is no time for a ‘dark alternative variety revue with comedy, freakshow, neo-burlesque and macabre musings’ – but that’s the vagaries of Edinburgh programming for you.

No was there any sense of the underground feeling the blurb suggested. You can’t just use the adjectives and just hope it happens. And as for dark, the audience was lit up like Gatwick’s runway. There’s no intimacy here, let alone the covert gathering promised.

The only nods to the supposed theme were the ‘neo-burlesque’ acts who bookended the show: Mocha Deluxe, who performed a unseductive, unartistic striptease but then impressed with her gymnastic flips; and Daiquari Dusk – the Scottish country dancer who stripped on Britain’s Got Talent – who here performed a playful balloon-popping routine.

Unbalancing the show was seven-strong improv act The Scat Pack, taking up nearly 25 of the allotted 60 minutes with their extended movie pastiche. It’s what they do in their own show, Lights! Camera! Improvise! but overstayed their welcome here.

They created a thriller in a mental asylum, as suggested by the audience, with all subsequent plot twists suggested by the narrator, who occasionally added sardonic comment to the idea. The team are competent ad-libbers, though never produced any moments of sublime wit, and resorted too often to ending scenes with a burst of physical violence as an easy get-out.

New York guitar comic Jessica Delfino sang two of her quirky folk songs, one with the delightful refrain ‘Remember, once a month, for a week, I bleed’ while the other was about those desperate for fame without reason. No great ideas, but the songs were jolly enough, and she kept it brief.

Clear stars of the show, though, were the fabulous La De Dahs, a three-part female close harmony group who cover Forties classics such as the Andrews Sisters’ Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and, better yet, adapt modern songs such as The Specials’ Ghost Town and The Darkness’s I Believe In A Thing Called Love, which becomes ethereally beautiful from their larynxes. Creating all the instruments a cappella, the La De Dahs are just the people you’d want on your side in Never Mind The Buzzcocks’ intros round.

They also sing a lovely cover of Radiohead’s Creep – which must be particularly suitable for this sort of adaptation, since both Lady Carol and Ali McGregor also have versions in their cabaret sets – but add their own do-wop stamp to it.

Kabarett’s Kleine Komedie offers a different line-up each night – well, afternoon – so there’s no guarantee of what you’ll get, other than a free peek at some of the vaudeville-style performers on at the Fringe.

Review date: 11 Aug 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett