Double R

The building has the sort of dilapidated charm you only get if you house something hidden and perfect. The Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club houses The Double R Club, a David Lynch themed cabaret created by Rose Thorne and Benjamin Louche. Rose, a performer in her own right, is content to show her considerable skills as a promoter while Benjamin comperes the night. Benjamin Louche is that most perfect of things: an ex first wave goth. He can put on full makeup faster than any of the girls and has an air of degraded lasciviousness, like a demonic update of the Compere from Cabaret. Benjamin intersperses witty banter with absurdist humour and his brand of singing involves a fuzzy megaphone and an atmospherically sparse background loop. I kind of love him.

The show is a who’s who of original London cabaret. Tricity Vogue performs her Blue Lady, a living painting who sings on the nature of the blues. Her performance is witty and oddly moving despite the fat drunk chick in the back who keeps asking loudly and repeatedly if she was supposed to be a smurf. Fancy Chance is spot on as Eraserhead’s Lady in the Radiator, smiling unnervingly whilst opening tiny eggs filled with goo and toy alien fetuses. Although a slice of vintage Lynch it works as a cabaret piece; fundamentally entertaining, weird yes, but who doesn’t like a bit of surreality with their evening?

 

Delphi Whitelight is the second female cabaret singer of the evening. Lovely girl- although when she asked me what I thought of her name, I admitted she sounded like a character from Charmed. Redeemably, she has a beautiful voice and sang Portishead’s Wandering Star accompanied by Fancy Chance and Blanche DuBois on backing vocals. Ah, Blanche… I haven’t gotten to him yet. A lithe boy backstage but onstage he outdrags Priscilla with his take on Liza’s drug fuelled later years, lip-synching to a live performance of Mein Heir which he “sings” to a small black dildo before replacing it with something that could have been stolen off a horse, tassel twirling from three places (I’ll leave you to imagine the third), high kicking with a fervour usually found only in religious extremists and ending in a split so abrupt and painful that I wince with sympathy for him even as I join the tidal wave of applause that sweeps the stage after.

 

The burlesque of the evening consisted of Glasgow’s alternative burlesque star Cat Aclysmic and a 6’4 goddess of a creature aptly named Lucy Longlegs who sways her way into the audience’s nightmares with a grotesque balloon pop as a white faced butcher knife wielding clown, the most terrifying part of the act being when she threw both (real) knives down, missing our compere’s leg by inches. This, I found out, is not part of the act.

 

An endearingly weird accordionist named Tom Baker (no relation to Dr Who) and Craig the Incredible Hula Boy (who does exactly what he says on the tin) complete the line up, but the highlight comes midway through when Tricity, Fancy, Blanche, and Delphi sang “Llorando (Crying)” one at a time, lighting their faces in the pitch darkness and mouthing along as the singer to the right sings the verses. It is terrifying, entrancing, and beautiful – which is exactly how I found the night. I would say more nights should be like it but I love the Double R Club so much I want it to stay what it is: unique and a surreal gem in the cabaret world.