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Brighton Fringe 2017

David Hoyle

Tim Whitehead Management

Genre: Cabaret, Performance Art, Political

Venue: Brighton Speigeltent

Festival:


Low Down

David Hoyle delivers an evening of magnificent anti-gender performance art.  David’s intelligence, ease and love completely fills the Spiegeltent throughout the entire performance with no hint in dropping the pace and tension.

We are treated to satirical comedy, audience connections, political observations, poetry juxtaposed to abstract music, raw and gritty songs, painting and last but not least his beauty. Dressed in an outfit courtesy of Brighton charity shops that literally flowed with his dialogue with exhilarating and provocative make-up that challenges you to take David seriously. This experience is a work of pathos art that stirs up sorrow, rage and love that lasts for days.

David Hoyle

Review

David greets every section of the large audience, with a lit light bulb and a flyer, as he wraps his warmth around every lady, gentlemen and anyone clever enough to transcend gender.  We are immediately drawn into and become part of his art.  This performance art has a heavy presence of connectivity and what it feels like to be alive in this present day politically and anthropocentric-ally.  We witness David begin to connect with the audience verbally to not use them for victims of ridicule to gain laughs but to actually identify and relate.

David moves on to share anthems of love through song with no essence of lipsincing to create a plethora of femininity.  Rather to lay down at our feet raw notions of love and loss with qualities of Liza Minnelli and punk.  David shares his identification of Liza’s persona with many hints of her wit, humour, style, tragedy and grace.  These anthems of love transcend into the powerful rendition of ‘Maybe this Time’ from Liza’a cabaret.

We are thus treated to a nostalgic and beautiful poem about loneliness punctuated by music with lines such as ‘loneliness is a cathedral in creativity’ and the way in which it is read reverberates in your thoughts for hours.  Prior to the reading we meet, with the addition of reading glasses, the ‘university lecturer’ which hits the comedic mark.  The only props on stage are an easel and a selection of paints and two stools. We are treated to David painting a mother and daughter on stage as his muse and finally by the audience offering six words for which he created a rip roaring song.

For David Hoyle there was a strong sense that we as the audience were part of the performance art.  A collective consciousness of what it feels to love and the need to be loved in this present day of community decline.  We are asked to think about each other, politics and mental health as David uses song, poetry, music and art. This is performance art at its best. Where we are asked to engage directly with social reality and the politics of identity.

 

Published