BEACHCOMBER

101 YEARS OLD AND STILL BLISSFULLY UNENERGETIC...

THE SHOW, they say, must go on. But rarely if ever have I seen a show continuing under such trying circumstances as the performance I attended at the Underbelly Festival on London’s South Bank on Thursday last week.

Black Cat: Bohemia, as the show was intriguingly titled, began with a garishly dressed and even more garishly hair-coloured sultry singer/ hostess giving a potted history of Bohemia and making glorious, wellmeaning fun of some members of the audience. She then introduced the members of her troupe, who proceeded to do some impossibly impressive gymnastics with hoops varying in size from human height to very small.

Amazingly, they hung from, or rolled around in, the large ones and leapt around to jump through the small ones. I was somewhat surprised that the health and safety people did not insist on jumping through the large hoops and hanging from the smaller ones. But that was by no means the first time that health and safety entered my head during the show.

After the introductory bouncing, the hostess, whose name, appropriately enough, was Miss Frisky, introduced their supposedly star performer, Leon Fagbemi, known as “The Maestro”. He came onto the small stage with a bound and a leap, then limped off, which I assumed was a funny way of exaggerating the danger of what they were doing. My concerns about health and safety however grew as The Maestro did not return to the stage.

After it was all over, and the rest of the troupe had flung themselves around and bounced and hung and spun and sang and joked to the great appreciation of the audience, I learned that Leon Fagbemi had suffered a real injury and was immediately taken to hospital. Without revealing a hint of the problem, Miss Frisky had friskily introduced two troupe members to do their bit somewhat earlier than had been scheduled in the performance, and while they were doing so, she and the rest of the cast re-choreographed the entire show in a way that kept us all amused and entranced despite the absence of the star, never suspecting that anything had gone wrong.

This was show-must-go-on-ness at its best. Despite the star’s injury, the rest of the cast continued throwing themselves around with apparent abandon and the fire-eating lady set fire to everything in sight on the stage, causing the fellow sitting at the back with the fire extinguisher at the ready to twitch several times in a worried, ready for action manner but always settling back in his seat when the apparent crisis was over.

There are a few things in life, such as disco dancing, abstract art and lion-taming, that I view with a mixture of “wish I could do that” and “glad I don’t do that”. The brilliantly reckless cast of Black Cat: Bohemia evoke both those extremes and knowing that they are genuinely doing something dangerous emphasises the impression.

Black Cat: Bohemia runs until the end of the month. Tickets and details at underbellyfestival.com. Go if you can. They’re great fun and very brave.