Review: Kirsty's Sing Along Party

 

This is the first year of the brand spanking new Chesham Fringe Festival, and watfordfringereviews.blogspot.com is delighted to be there in support, creating a space to kick off the conversation about the dizzying array of creative fare on offer!

My last show of the first day of the festival was Human Jukebox Kirsty Newton's Singalong Party!

Like karaoke with the pressure to single yourself out taken away, this was a raucous night of fast paced, high energy, immersive entertainment where everyone felt fully included and had the chance to sing their hearts out without having to take that sometimes scary step into the limelight.

Kirsty was masterful at creating a party atmosphere, encouraging whoops and cheers, throwing out funny lines of well-rehearsed banter, snipping songs short when they'd done their job and mashing tunes together in an unrehearsed, give-it-a-go fashion that she called Deadly Medleys. Our themes were jungle, sex and birthdays, of which there were 3 in the crowd (birthdays that is), all having a wonderful time. The whole show is a manic, frenzied pleasure boat of fun which, under Kirsty's careful captaincy, stays merrily afloat and blissfully dismissive of the rules of navigation.

Indeed, Kirsty employs a cast a background help to support with the onerous task of following the rules, and the funny interplay of her both leaning on them and dismissing them helps create the glorious sense of madcap anarchy that characterised the show. Her best friend of 30 years was on lyric duty, desperately trying to keep up with displaying lyrics on a projection screen as Kirsty dashed haphazardly from one song to another. There's no set list, but the barman was called on to refer to a waiting list of songs that ticket holders could submit via email, and they were called out from top to bottom, from bottom to top, from anywhere at all. Finally her young brother was the Time B*stard, calling out random reminders of how much time she had left.

By the end, all rules were out of the window and the polite Chesham audience were up on their feet dancing, drinking and having a whale of time. Liberation and anarchy through poptastic sing-along; this was a revolutionary tonic for the soul and long may Kirsty reign!