REVIEW | Baby Lame’s Shit Show

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Baby Lame's Shit Show isn't shit at all

After getting lost amongst the hipsters of Shoreditch and wrongly asking directions to “The Glory Hole”, Erotic Review stumbled across Baby Lame’s Shit Show downstairs at The Glory pub. Entering through a staircase plastered in shiny gold foil, we were greeted by the “PUNK-HORROR-DRAG cabaret monstrosity” that is Baby Lame, and various others in genderless, trashtastic costumes. Perching against a wall amongst a throng of young hip people, No Doubt blasting the speakers, we were treated to a collection of weirdly wondrous and straight up crude cabaret.

Kicking it all off was Baby Lame dressed in a chicken onesie with two side-kicks, both mad hot dancers, one apparently apathetic to the whole thing and one riotously keen. Then a cute little blonde girl got two blokes from the audience to put a condom on a fish and then each spread her legs and thrust it inside her (apparently a Ru Paul reference) while she read a poem about being way too into someone. The whole thing felt oddly empowering. Gasps and hysterical laughter egged her on, and to conclude she gave the fish to an unsuspecting front-rower as a gift.

Highlights included the “M&S and S&M” created and performed by The Fire Factory, dressed in old-lady bodysuits complete with sagging breasts and splendid muff, doing a strip tease with a whip and inflatable bottoms. Also the infamous SHIT LIPS OR SLUT DROP!, which comprises of three audience members being dragged onto stage and forced to slut drop for fear of getting “shit lipped” with what looked like chocolate peanut butter. “I’m not going to kill any of you with my nuts am I?” cackled Baby Lame.

The height of filth was, undoubtedly, the inimitable Mouse, who at one point smoked a cigar with her vagina, puffing smoke into various audience member’s faces, and then filled her arse with soapy water and squirted it at us in the front row, protected only by the ‘splash barrier’, i.e. a plastic sheet. The girls next to me were squealing in laughter and disbelief throughout the whole thing, which was as amusing as the act.

 The Shit Show is, thankfully, as far removed from the Cirque du Soir era of cabaret as can possibly be. This is not about teasing, intrigue or temptation. It is about grabbing sex, gender and decency by the balls and pulling hard, fucking up the gender binary and questioning our ideas of performance, art and ‘good’ without losing the sincerity that is often remarkably lacking in mainstream cabaret.

Follow Baby Lame on twitter @Baby_Lame for news of future (shit) shows

Photography by Paul Grace www.paulgrace-eventphotos.co.uk

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