LIFE IS A CABARET

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome – after a year or more of nothing but online meetings, videos and audio performances, White Cobra are coming back to life (back to reality?) with our first live, in person, in front of an actual audience performance with a one-night cabaret at The White Horse pub in Old, on Saturday the 26^th June. There won’t be any actual horses, but some of the material might be a bit on the old side!

So, what does the cabaret involve? Sally Bowles and a bevy of beauties in their underwear dancing to Weimar republic tunes? No. There will be no Joel Grey or any salacious behaviour at all, in fact we’re aiming for a family-friendly night, as frankly everyone is desperate to have a night out being entertained and we want to give as many people a chance to see it as possible.

There’ll be some familiar (and less familiar) comedy sketches culled from our collective memories of our favourite TV and radio comedy shows of yesteryear (some of them more yester than others!) featuring Fraser Haines, Lou Chawner, Jude Wilton and John Myhill (doubling up as director, and hopefully doubling up the audience with laughter), with guest appearances from Victoria Miles and Barry Dougall.

There’ll be music in the form of songs from the multi-talented Victoria, and two sets from the dynamic duo of Rod and Kim Arkle – if anyone saw their show at The Playhouse a couple of years ago, you’ll know how good they are.

And finally (as if that wasn’t enough) there will be two short playlets, both by Vivian C. Lermond, author of A Summer of Spring which was one of White Cobra’s brilliant audio plays released last year. For the live shows we will be performing Literally Speaking about an Irish couple in New York, featuring John Myhill and Mo Shapiro as the couple, and Megan Lucas as their friendly waitress; and Myrtle Beach Sunrise about two widowed American ladies on “vacation” (as the Yanks call it) played by Lynne O’Sullivan and Mo Shapiro in a second role, enjoying the attentions of waiter Barry Dougall. Who wouldn’t?

All together we hope that makes a fun uplifting evening to welcome audiences back to live performance, and give us performers a (relatively) easy restart to showing off in public for fun. Normally at this point there’d be an encouragement to buy tickets but at time of writing it’s more or less sold out – check social media in case anything changes (for example, if we’re allowed to expand the capacity or add another night!).