Last Weds: To the Canal Cafe Theatre in Little Venice. It’s a venue that is more Edinburgh Fringe than London, and plays host to many performers trying out their latest shows before they transfer to the festival.
I’m here to see Martin White and his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. He sings, plays accordion, piano and ukelele, while a changing gaggle of young minstrels back him on vocals, cellos, clarinets, glockenspiels, trumpet and so forth. Something of the vaudeville as opposed to cabaret, it’s idiosyncratic and charming fare. Mr White’s friendly and self-deprecating stage manner is central to the appeal, particularly on songs like ‘Mystery Fax Machine Girl’. Here, he recounts a true aspect of his former life toiling behind an office desk in London’s corporate salt mines. His daily drudge is mitigated by seeing a pretty girl on the other side of the umpteen glass walls, caught in his desk-bound field of vision by the fax machine, and never once spoken to.
If Nick Cave had written the lyric, it might have been stalker-like, even murderous. If the writer were me, I’d probably lace the song with attempts at arch aphorisms of tragicomic despair and general separation from the world. The usual Dickon Edwards-y sort of thing.
But Mr White’s sentiment is more sweet and romantically funny in a manner comparable with James Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life, or Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. Romantic comedy, but with a nod to the pathos of the individual bucking the system. And therefore romantic in that sense, too. He is the James Stewart of the accordion.
His opening number is a setting of James Elroy Flecker’s Golden Road To Samarkand. Which is something of a happy coincidence, as an hour or so previously, I was in the British Library finishing Neil Gaiman’s ten-volume Sandman series. The last of which, The Wake, opens with a few verses from Mr Flecker. Typical. It’s like buses. You wait ages for instances of inadvertent exposure to the verses of James Elroy Flecker, then two come along at once.
In the bar afterwards I meet Ms Angelique (who sings with the band), and her partner Mr Ben (who doesn’t). She comes from Los Angeles, and corrects my pronunciation of the city. It’s ‘An-jer-liss’, not ‘An-jerlees’ as I’d called it.
She says she’s a big fan of musical theatre, especially Sondheim, is a great admirer of Alan Cumming and Stephen Fry and loves Shaun Of The Dead. I tell her I was one of the zombie extras in the film, wearing a tie. I also mention that I didn’t feel particuarly well cast as one of a large crowd, zombie or not. That without wishing to sound haughty and ungracious (Reader’s Voice: ‘Why stop now?’ ) I’m possibly more suited to being a lone vampire or a dandy ghost. Or that man in the suit who gets chased on the Underground in An American Werewolf In London, who THEN gets to come back as a zombie.
She wonders in turn which kind of monster she’d be best suited to play.
I suggest, entirely affectionately, ‘The Fag Hag From The Black Lagoon.’
Which is a comedy skit that writes itself.
