The Creepy Cabaret Cabin – Edinburgh Horror Fest2020

The Zoom/Skype/online world of Lockdown has provided ample opportunity for family members to wobble uninvited into our worlds of work and/or creativity and delivered unscheduled contributions. Thus it was as one sat down to review The Creepy Cabaret Cabin this evening, a collection (one says ‘a curation’ these days) of Drag, Burlesque and Circus performers undressing to various degrees spiced with blood, wine, food and scary stuff, the results alternately comic, stomach-churning and plain unsettling.

‘She’s drinking Irn Bru at breakfast!’ shouted my little one as Roxy Stardust opened with a tale of domestic shenanigans demonstrating that you should ‘ne’er underestimate yer Granny’. Sobering advice upon this evidence. And to the tune of ‘Hoots Mon’ by Lord Rockingham’s XI.

Next up was Lady Phoenix removing a pair of foot-long red Marigolds (other rubber gloves are available) in a pastoral setting. #Topwyf sticks her head into my broom cupboard/office exclaiming ‘It’s Lady Gore Gore!’ as she disrobes further, finding time along the way to lick clean of blood and sinew a detached Werewolf’s head. A few seconds later we see that within is a human skull similarly garnished.

Ebony Silk cavorted for several minutes within a large decorator’s dust sheet before revealing some racy undergarments. It was presumably a silk sheet, illustrating they have a different class of decorators in her barrio.

Returning to an alfresco setting HP Loveshaft appeared by a riverbank beset with willow trees, ravishingly made up, to perform his interpretation of Mikelangelo’s ‘Formidable Marinade’ (NB lyrics – Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls/solo fame). One would say he did it justice, except for the fact the thirteen-year old – unaware of the genre, having never seen Cabaret – popped his head in to observe; ‘there’s better stuff on TikTok these days’.

Magenta Lust’s ‘Down With The Sickness’ was the show’s most genuinely striking moment, chiefly due to her excellent choreography. It made one think, and I’m still thinking. The architects of the second piece of music used were, aptly, Disturbed.

Last came the Space Cowboy performing a series of stunts with a Resonance Bipolar Transformer (a Tesla coil), the funniest of which was the Electrified Sausage Of Death. More hair-raising was a Lightsaber moment, some burning wood and a very ‘don’t try this at home’ manoeuvre involving a sword on fire. Down his throat.

Proceedings were pulled together by MC Andromada Mystic and bookended by music from Gothzilla. https://www.edhorrorfest.co.uk/cabincabaret

Reviewer: Roger Jacobs

Reviewed: 23^rd October 2020

North West End UK Rating: ★★