Emerging Artists – Crazy Coqs

Emerging Artists at the Crazy Coqs, London.

Despite the financial rewards of a West End hit, there are still relatively few avenues for new musical theatre writers to showcase their new work. Thankfully Simon Grieff has recognised this need and created Emerging Artists at the Crazy Coqs in central London. Picking up the late night slot at the popular cabaret venue, Emerging Artists offers to introduce regular cabaret customers to new work and sound out audiences with songs in progress.

The first of these evenings for 2014 featured those partners in rhyme Verity Quade and Rob Archibald. The two joined forces several years ago and have already completed the highly popular compilation CD Scrapbook, featuring their work sung by a slew of West End names including Patina Miller, Stephen Ashfield, Louise Dearman and Rosemary Ashe. This evening they were showcasing several numbers from a new piece they are working on entitled The Dating Cycle.

Contemporary dating may be a popular subject for new writers – particularly musical theatre writers – but thankfully The Dating Cycle throws up some interesting and thankfully diverse tunes that show promise. ‘Mr Right’ featured the female protagonist desperate to cease her addiction to serial dating. A performer herself, Quade was extremely comfortable in front of the microphone and delivered the bright, witty comic number to great effect. It was a crowd pleaser that sat well next to the rather dreamy, romantic ballad that was ‘If’, sung by Greg Castiglioni – an actor last seen playing master shipbuilder Thomas Andrews in the multi-award winning Titanic.

‘Who Knows?’, a life-affirming duet sung by CJ Johnson and Quade carried a good deal more passion and power and featured some glorious harmonies that really showcased the concept. Going off at a tangent, ‘Who Knows?’ could quite easily become the anthem for gay marriage! Finally for The Dating Cycle, ‘Taking Chances’ – an ebullient, finale number delivered as a quartet – featured some great scoring and superb soaring vocals, but I couldn’t help think it might appear a little emotionally cliched.

Alongside Quade and Archibald’s exciting new work, Garry Lake, author of the hilarious musical parody Jest End is developing a new song cycle that examines the highs and lows of social media networking. It is interesting to see the words ‘post’, ‘tweet’ and ‘selfie’ spring up more and more in lyric patterns, but this is only to be expected as the western world continues to embrace social networking in all its developing forms.

Lake will be well-known for his parodies and indeed ‘We Didn’t Have It Easy’, the story of a father learning to understand what his daughter is doing on Twitter, was a funny and original idea. The composer, however, chose to open with ‘Logging Out’, a formidable if melancholy ballad about a man who has decided to log-out permanently. It was stirring stuff and immediately established Lake’s ability to diversify and develop strong, powerful numbers that reach for the soul.

‘I’m Yours’, sung by Carl Mullaney and Kayleigh Stephenson, was a compelling emotionally charged number, which was lifted beautifully in the third verse with a delicate counterpoint. Stephenson was joined by Jodie Jacobs for ‘Time’s Called For You’, a sweet duet penned by Lake, which called for two strong female voices. The two artists did justice to the number, which featured some beautiful harmonies, and while the sound was almost that of a power ballad, there was a vulnerability in both the lyric and the styling that gave it a greater dimension.

The next Emerging Artists cabarets are on Saturday 26 April and Saturday 7 June at Crazy Coqs. On this occasion, the accompanist was Gareth Ellis.

Paul Vale

www.brasseriezedel.com/crazy-coqs/emerging-artists

Emerging Artists season at the Crazy Coqs – News