Fascinating Aida – Queen Elizabeth Hall and Touring

Fascinating Aida continues at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London until 5 January 2020.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The antidote to any Election Night blues arrived swiftly with the outrageous, hot-off-the-press satire of Fascinating Aida kicking off a month of wickedness and devilry on London’s South Bank before embarking on a strenuous national tour.

Yes, Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson and Liza Pulman are back at the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the first time in five years with a show so bang up to date that Prince Andrew, Jo Swinson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel and Greta Thunberg all somehow get woven into the fabric of an irresistibly fruity couple of hours.

Probably not suitable for maiden aunts (although appearances can be deceptive) and definitely not suitable as a Christmas treat for the grandchildren, this trio of ladies of a certain age (184 years in total, Pulman, the youngest of them informed us and “I’m only 22”) get away with language so colourful it cannot be repeated on a family website.

And although one Sunday newspaper critic’s exhortation to “see them before you die, otherwise your life will have been meaningless” is stretching it a bit far, they are a very more-ish confection with a wide range of targets, many of them topical or political.

Aida founder Keane is so green she refused to have a printed programme. Instead there’s a digital version you can download one from their website.

Versatile Keane, the founder of the group in 1983, was quickly joined by Anderson the following year. They write most of the material. Twice disbanded and twice re-formed, Pulman was a much later arrival in 2004, her predecessors including Marilyn Cutts, Issy van Randwyck and, briefly, Bonnie Langford.

The current show naturally features their biggest hits ‘Cheap Flights’, ‘Dogging’ (“ask the staff what it means or look it up on Google”) and the incredibly rude ‘Try Not To Be a C**t, It’s Christmas’, ditties which have a cult following with 25 million hits and counting on YouTube and Facebook.

The hilarious ‘Cheap Flights’ about the hidden charges of booking with an airline (not mentioned by name but Ryanair love it!) from Stansted to Tralee “where’s there’s no such thing as a flight for 50p” never fails to amuse and the line “if you haven’t prepaid to use the steps, you’ll have to feckin’ jump” is just wonderful.

But the song which most resonated with the many who got to their feet to applaud was Anderson’s courageous ‘Prisoner of Gender’ (a brilliant pun) in which she lays bare her unease at being born in a male body and the pre-adolescent feelings of alienation which led to her transgendering surgically shortly after leaving university.

It took ten years to get the tone and content exactly right and, sitting simply on a chair, she absolutely nails it. A moment to treasure.

Less successful is her spiel about health and safety which doesn’t quite work but there is some new stuff mixed with old favourites ‘This Ain’t The Hokey Cokey Any More’, about the spirit being more willing than the flesh, ‘Lieder’, about Germans who can’t sing, and ‘Funerals’, the nearest you get to partying when you outlast your mates.

‘Bulgarian Song Cycle 2019’, ‘Lerwick Town’, ‘Bob’ (the widower who changed his name to Babs) and ‘Instagram Hashtag’ were fresh to me as was ‘True, True, True (or Fake News) which opened the show.

Act II is a little flat at times but this is a work in progress and any minor problems will surely be ironed long before the eight-week tour hits the road at Watford in February.

Keane’s baleful, quizzical presence brings the actress out in her and the trio’s flexibility in some interesting choreography by Victoria Hinde illuminates an evening in which Keane shares piano duties with the richly talented Michael Roulston. Paul Foster directs.

Jeremy Chapman