Bourgeois & Maurice - 7th Birthday // The Spiegeltent, NNF2014, 23.05.14
We'd been lured down their hedonistic path with melody and dancing, like Peter Piper leading us headfirst into the middle of a Vice magazine double spread.
Happy 7th birthday Bourgeois & Maurice. After two previously successful trips to the Vaudevillian fun-magnet, the Spiegeltent in Chapelfield Gardens, it's an invitation not to decline; if previous visits are anything to go by, this is the sort of party that will leave you dancing on the table of a Mexican restaurant, full of tequila, wearing a stolen sombrero, by 6pm. You know the kind.
It's a riot within that mirrored tent; every year there's an atmosphere of anticipation, the unknown and of 50+ Waitrose shoppers leaving their Monday-Friday selves at the door and joining the enlightened. That's never truer than with this show. When I saw B&M two years ago, we left the tent feeling like we'd been tickled aggressively and maniacally by their shock-comedy; we'd been lured down their hedonistic path with melody and dancing, like Peter Piper leading us headfirst into the middle of a Vice magazine double spread. And we loved them for it. Would they still be able to enchant and manipulate us seven years into their act?
I think what I hadn't appreciated from the description of the show was that this 7th birthday would revisit much of their previous material, with a few new songs peppered in. I found myself warmly recalling how much I laughed the first time I heard 'Climate Change is Good' ("change is as good as a rest"), or the pertinently addictively catchy 'Ritalin' ("do you like that little bit of Ritalin we gave you?"), but they couldn't raise a LOL out of me again. That's not to say 'Climate Change', for example isn't a wickedly brilliantly written song; the characters of the fiercely camp, walking smut-fest Georgeois Bourgeois and the deadpan Bride-of-Frankenstein / Patsy-off-of-Ab-Fab, piano playing Maurice Maurice are at their most magnified when singing us a little ditty that we know is simply immoral. There were the couple of promised new additions, but not as many as I'd hoped. Social Media and feminism ("because it's on-trend", as Bourgeois rightly points out) get a B&M makeover, but the topics feel obvious and without that indulgent shock value. Have we moved on in two years? Are we harder to surprise? Have our moral cores been obliterated by Frankie Boyle types constantly chipping away at what we perceive to be the line you musn't cross? I've seen Sarah Millican deliver edgier material, and she's got a show on BBC1.
The costume changes, although still devilishly outlandish, were the same as before, and didn't provide as much punctuation as when I saw them before. There was some good audience interaction; the straddling of middle-aged, grey-in-every-sense gentlemen rekindle that slight discomfort that's so appealing in a comedy show, but it could have been pushed more. With their 7th birthday as the premise for the show, they could have incited some childlike chaos into what was essentially a number-after-number 'Best Of...' set. I'm not a cynical, snidy reviewer - see how much I loved them last time I saw them here - but I lost concentration, and was stifling (badly) some monstrous yawns.
Like many 7th birthdays, it was the same old formula, and half of the party goers got tired and emotional while the birthday girl and boy showed off in front of their friends. I seriously look forward to B&M's adolescent period; an unpredictable, uncooperative time of life which will surely relight the mischief needed for this celebrated cabaret duo.
Emma R. Garwood
