These Divas Didn't really get my Respect

Last night me and my closies went to see a show. A show! London Town! The West End! I haven’t been to see a show in the West End since before I even lived in London. In first year of uni we would get the train in to Paddington, buy cheap tickets from Leicester square for anything showing that evening that was cheap, then wonder around going oooo and thinking Trocodero was cool and having lunch in central London and assuming that was a good thing to do. We didn’t even have a drink cos we thought it was too expensive. And once we sat in the front row and saw a play called “Humble Boy” and it had felicity kendall in it and she said “I’m not angry, I’m incandescent with raaaaage!” and we loved it and we waited by the stage door and the main man told us he could see our smiling faces and that we were the best audience members he’d ever seen. And Felicity Kendall was a bitch to us and my friend Andy was heartbroken cos she was his idol. And then once we saw My Fair Lady and I stole the bincolulars. Oh the folly of youth.


So anyways. My friend Halcyon organised this night out. I was pretty excited cos it’s not often all the closies get together. The show is called “Respect La Diva” and it’s showing at the Garrick Theatre. Quite a main theatre in “theatre land”. So we met up before hand. I really struggle with “theatreland”. The pubs are all really skanky with weird patterned carpets and they have fake blackboards that advertise “fish and chips”. For fuck’s sake, tourists coming to London must think all we eat is fish and chips. I guess it’s like when I went to Paris and I thought Parisans only ate fondue. That’s probably true though.

So yeah, the pubs are packed full of tossers and tourists and they don’t have any cute little pubs with nice wallpaper and giant glasses of wine. The sort of cloned cosy pubs you get in South London which is what I like. I judge pubs based on the wallpaper, olden day style picture frames and the quality of the hummus and bread on the snack menu. But enough of that. They don’t have that on the Strand so we went to All Bar One. When I first moved back to the UK after my year finding myself in an various English Language schools, and I was looking for a job in London, I used to think All Bar One was really cool. They have them in central locations! They do nachos!


I don’t think that anymore.


So me and my mate ordered some sharey platey small things that were 3 for £15. I'll be honest, I think that the cost of them together was actually less that £15 but we were hungry. We were still hungry when we finished by hey ho.


But on with the show!

It’s a show of songs that claims to enter a range of “divas” into the Diva hall of Fame. Queue lights and music.


We were sat right in the front row, reminiscent of my brush with Felicity Kendall. And from there you could really see the make-up caked faces of the old boiler washed up singers, belting out tunes by Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Beyonce, Dusty Springfield etc.


There were 4 main singers and they were really giving it their all, waving their hands around and fluttering their eyelashes. They were giving it real sass. You had one who reminded me of Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act when she's in those terrible shows in Reno. She did a little “bit” where she said she’d gornw up with a lot of the divas they were paying tribute to and was even still friends with them. AHAH that’s a funny joke! So I laughed laudly and she seemed very offended and went to be “oh ha ha” and then carried on. Later on it was revealed that she actually used to be in the 3 degrees and really did know the Divas. Oops.


The there was a blond one who was so old and scrawny thin and her costumes were too big for her. here she is. She's not blnd here though. Maybe she was wearing a wig.



Then there was one who was quite young and really giving it too much sass for some of the songs she was singing and you could also see right up her dress from our front row seats. Apparently she was in pop idol or something. sometimes she would sort of squat with her legs spread when she hit the bog notes and she was always doing sassy shaky around hands. I just found out that she actually WON pop idol in 2002! So well done to my friend Laura for spotting that one.


And finally. The best one of all was this black lady with long black hair who was so sassy it should be illegal. She had a weird hand twitch, like she was conducting the music. On acid. And she made these really weird faces like she was in pain when she hit the big notes. And sometimes she would move the microphone around in a motion that looked like she was drawing a Chelsea smile upon her face. And dead eyes. AMAZING.
Her face was mesmermising.
Here it is.


You can tell that photo is airbrushed to within an inch of it’s life.
Then we have the compare who was Andy the binman off of X factor. I've never heard anyone deliver their lines so much like someone who was delivering lines. He wasn’t wooden. Just really really like he was in a 6th form play. In between some of the songs he would do a “bit” with this girl pretending to be a sound technician and she would go on and on about how she wanted to be a Diva and have HER name in lights and it all built up to this bit at the end where she got her name in lights and she got to do a song. It was a bit of an anti climax really cos they only gave her ONE line of song and I didn’t even recognise her and thought it was one of the others with a wig on. and she totally refused to come out of character and kept stage whispering to the old blond lady “I love my dress” and the blond lady would nod politely thinking “ok ok they get it”.

The whole show was so ropey and cheesey. The dancers were pretty good but they weren’t really giving it their all. Sometimes you just wanted to shout “look this is a proper performance put your back into it!”. and the 3 backup singers were given really complicated dance routines to do but couldn’t really cope. I just don’t understand who they were cast at all. It was like watching your mum floundering in the lights.

And then at the end we all clapped and gave a cheer and the young one who won pop idol actually told us to request an encore. We did and it was fun and we all got out of our seats. I felt a bit on show dancing out of my seat in the front row but I shook my booty in the hope that the director would see me and give me a part. I'm not joking, that thought actually went through my head and I wasn’t even tipsy cos I'm still not drinking.

So all in all it was a great night out. I laughed so much through the whole thing although I was worried the cast would see me. I'm pretty sure the weird one with the mesmerising face saw me at one point and scowled. And we even saw Harry off of Eastenders in the interval. These media types, always with the glitz and glamour huh?