Love And Other Bad Ideas: Dillie Keane at The Pheasantry, London.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Introduced as “the funniest woman in England”, Dillie Keane is all of that and much more because she can make us cry as well with beautifully crafted songs of regret, nostalgic remembrance of mis-spent youth and lost love.
She says she has a voice like a dying crow being crushed by an angry sheep but is being harsh on herself. It is an education watching this exquisite actress get every ounce out of a song with an exceptional range of facial expressions and pinpoint timing.
In her new show at The Pheasantry she again had that suave operator Michael Roulston on piano but accompanied herself delightfully on occasions, the pair’s four-hands finale on the Steinway a triumphant encore.
And when she deliberately turns up late for her second set, it gives Roulston the chance to show what he can do with a witty self-penned ditty about ‘The Stand-in Guy’.
It all starts with some hilarious bedtime contortions on top of the piano in ‘My Average Morning’ when, to her horror, she finds an alien extra arm beside her after a boozy night in Rome followed by a redhead of unknown origin on her pillow.
She is either making us wobble with mirth or dive for a hankie. A lady overladen with talents, she sings, acts, composes, amuses, plays blissful piano, writes newspaper columns and back in 1983 founded Fascinating Aida.
The satirical comedy act, Keane in partnership with long-time collaborator Adele Anderson and these days Liza Pulman, is reviving for Christmas with concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank before going on tour.
Keane has now been making us laugh at her gentrified vulgarity for so long it’s easy to think she’s just a wickedly funny interpreter of the naughty songs she has entertained us with for so many uproarious years.
‘This Ain’t The Hokey Cokey Anymore’, about the difficulties of lovemaking when hearing aids, bifocals, stoutness and bad knees have to be factored into the equation, nails a problem that comes to us all in the end.
Another song, almost a monologue, about the charming chancer she meets in an Irish bar who said he owned “a parade of shops in Willesden”, “was the most feared man in the cheese business” and was “more married than he said” represents a wordsmith’s craft at its most precise, always with a rueful laugh behind the bitter dig.
‘Pam’ is the show-stopper. She’s the other woman ordered by the wronged wife to “get your snout out of my trough” because “one swallow doesn’t make a lover” (great line). Snarling “shall I post your bra or should I bring it round?”, it’s a masterpiece of ire with a rising F-word count and a powerful punchline that takes the audience aback.
In contrast, the sweetness and gentle reflection of ‘Out Of Practice’ concludes that “in the end the heart is never out of practice”.
It puts into poignant words what some young people often fail to grasp – that a 60-year-old is prey to the same butterflies and uncertainties about falling in love as they are. It’s just that priorities are different.
And a new love when one is of “a certain age” means getting used to alien hobbies or habits like barn dancing, steam fairs and dining at a Harvester just to please your man.
Keane attends more funerals than weddings these days and says something we old-’uns think but would never admit to – “that the cheering thing about funerals is the thought that I’ve outlived another friend.”
Some of the best songs aren’t hers but she totally inhabits them. On either side of the interval, New York songwriter Christine Lavin’s ‘A Good Thing He/She Can’t Read My Mind’ is a wickedly accurate and hilarious account of the give-and-take of habits and hobbies which has to take place if new relationships are to survive.
And LA lyricist Hillary Rollins provides the bittersweet ‘Everything Must Go’, an affecting song about the fall-out that happens when a relationship ends. As with everything, in Keane’s hands it’s very special.
Meanwhile Keane is standing as a Lib-Dem candidate in her local council elections later in the month and has launched a shityoudontneed.blog where she’s trying to make us get rid of the everyday products that are slowly poisoning us.
But upset her at your peril… as two slightly lubricated ladies in the front row on her final night discovered to their cost when she had yet another full house eating out of the palm of her hand.
Jeremy Chapman
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