Mama Cass Family Singers @ Tron 27th Oct
An implausible, yet perfectly evoked adventure of abduction, faked death and singing children
| 07 Dec 2007
The Mama Cass Family Singers is a tall story, spun out with video clips and supported by Amy Lame's relaxed and amiable presence. Amy Lame has developed a ubiquitous media personality in the past five years, through her club Duckie, teaming up with Danny Baker on the radio and bringing a sly irony to her minor celebrity status. Shifting almost imperceptibly from family anecdote into wild fantasy, Amy shares her childhood and family photo-album, before introducing an implausible, yet perfectly evoked adventure of abduction, faked death and singing children.
Lame doesn't bring much light to bear on the various themes that the story suggests. There are polite meditations on weight and food - unsurprisingly, given that both Cass and Lame are both strongly identified as positive, plus-size women - and vague thoughts on family and fame. Keeping the atmosphere playful, Lame leads her family through their memories of a time when the four children were abducted from a shopping mall by a sixties folk singer - presumed dead - and taken on a tour of the States as a cabaret band. Some fairly dark matters - sibling rivalry, mafia connections and drug addiction - are glossed over and Lame keeps a straight face throughout, making the join between fact and fiction difficult to discern.
If The Mama Cass Family Singers is a slight work, it does showcase Amy Lame as an idiosyncratic and charming performer: certainly, in lesser hands, this show would descend into absurdity and trite kitsch. Instead, she is almost able to convince the audience that she was selected at random to relive Mama Cass' thwarted dreams of musical success. Although a little trivial, MCFS is a celebration of Amy Lame's easy-going personality.
Lame doesn't bring much light to bear on the various themes that the story suggests. There are polite meditations on weight and food - unsurprisingly, given that both Cass and Lame are both strongly identified as positive, plus-size women - and vague thoughts on family and fame. Keeping the atmosphere playful, Lame leads her family through their memories of a time when the four children were abducted from a shopping mall by a sixties folk singer - presumed dead - and taken on a tour of the States as a cabaret band. Some fairly dark matters - sibling rivalry, mafia connections and drug addiction - are glossed over and Lame keeps a straight face throughout, making the join between fact and fiction difficult to discern.
If The Mama Cass Family Singers is a slight work, it does showcase Amy Lame as an idiosyncratic and charming performer: certainly, in lesser hands, this show would descend into absurdity and trite kitsch. Instead, she is almost able to convince the audience that she was selected at random to relive Mama Cass' thwarted dreams of musical success. Although a little trivial, MCFS is a celebration of Amy Lame's easy-going personality.