Tina del Twist: Caravan In The Sky

Assembly Checkpoint (Venue 322), until 28 August ★★★★

A warm, jazzy voice, a nice line in subtly shambolic slapstick and a bittersweet appreciation of the joys of solitude underpin this slow-burning charmer of a cabaret show.

Tina del Twist emerges at the start from a pop-up tent on the stage of the Assembly Checkpoint, embarking on an extended bout of semi-inebriated, broadly bewildered business in which she struggles to establish where she is, what she’s doing, who else might be involved and indeed where the stage might run out – all without ever seeming like she’s terribly bothered one way or the other.

The alter ego of comic Wes Snelling, Del Twist sports a flowing turban with a violet flower and an amiable air of hard-won indifference – to conventional understandings not only of space and time but also of social expectations. This leads to plenty of amusingly misfiring attempts at physical co-ordination and audience engagement but the clowning is also in service of a broader vision.

Caravan In The Sky emerges as a set about finding your own way through the world, even if it is fumblingly. The theme is solitude: not loneliness but the business of living alone among others, in caravan parks or apartment blocks or on stage, open to connection but determined to remain captain of one’s own little ship.

It’s in the songs that this finds its fullest and loveliest expression. Numbers such as All By Myself and One is the Loneliest Number are delivered in big, rich tones, sometimes with an edge. Del Twist isn’t afraid to amend lyrics to suit her sensibility and we get the sense that she sings for herself as much as for us, though other numbers embrace loving connection too. She sometimes feels adrift in this large room but adrift is a mode this intriguing character seems long accustomed to inhabiting.