PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Bristol Old Vic Basement (Mon 19 Sept)

PERFORMANCE POETRY This eclectic spoken-word-and-beyond monthly slot returns to BOV after its summer recess, the jam-packed Basement testament to its continuing popularity with Bristol audiences of all stripes and ages. “And not just the usual suspects either”, remarks my companion cheerfully, his shiny pate reflecting the glow of the spotlights and contrasting nicely with the facial hair and flowing locks of the surrounding romantics.

This evening’s wordfest kicks off with the lively Laurie Bolger, late of Bath and now of London town, who regales us with tales of lust in posh Shoreditch winebars, tinged with nostalgia for the downmarket West Country boozers she has forsaken – sex in the city served up with plenty of satirical juice and a dash of weltschmerz. If London’s world of high-end, hedonistic, thirty-something young professionals is the snakebite, then Bolger’s earthily rude word portraits are the antidote.

Next up is the beguiling Vanessa Kisuule, who only started performing last year and has since picked up a brace of slam awards. A boarding-school educated middle-class black girl who don’t do street patois and refuses to drop her Ts, Vanessa eschews any linking patter (“I’m not much good at it”) and launches straight into a short set of expressive poems, delivered straight to audience with no book in hand. Standing there with her long dark fairytale hair, in a floral tea-dress with starched petticoats and penny loafers, she is a black Alice feeling her way through a wonderland of cultural expectations, from which she emerges with her right to individuality firmly in tact as “a personality and not a mere nationality.” Literary, romantic, passionate and pleasingly old-school, she doesn’t shy away from big images or heartfelt themes, and succeeds in charming the socks off the audience. One to watch on the spoken word scene, is the kissable Ms Kisuule…

Last up is the “sickeningly talented” Dizraeli, Bristol-born rapper, poet and musician and leader of the seven-piece band Small Gods. He quickly divides the audience – literally – and gets them singing back up vocals to his first number, then he suddenly grabs a guitar and we go from hip hop seamlessly into English folk in a mash-up style reminiscent of Spiers & Boden’s Bellowhead, but with vocal rhythms that recall Nitin Sawhney’s seminal ‘Beyond Skin’. Dizraeli’s entire extended family is there – mum, dad, brother Toby and a bunch of friends: it’s mum’s birthday, Diz tells us. You can feel the family swelling with pride at Diz’s myriad achievements and you partake in a shared feeling that he is about to go large as a performer.

With that amount of family support behind him, his only dangers are over-confidence and self-reference… apart from that, his own innate bullshitometer should hopefully see him through on his way up, which is the direction he looks destined to travel in. He runs out of time on a banging set leaving the audience wanting more, and so they adjourn to the bar for a rendition of his signature ‘Bomb Tesco’ (check out the very fine clip on www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cOZN78H5jY&feature=related)

Oh what a night, late September back in… 2011. And, lest we forget, a night that is presided over and most wondrously glued together by the Northern soulfulness of silver-tongued, sparrow-kneed goodfellow, Byron Vincent. Witty, generous, and endlessly entertaining, Byron always gives it up for the good of the whole. Frankly, it’s high time that the Wizard of WoM had his own dedicated slot on the programme… we demand An Evening With Byron Vincent! ASAP, ta. And good on BOV for diversifying into the realms of poetry – along with Storytelling Sundays at TF’s Brewery, the spoken word scene in Bristol is becoming a real speciality. (Rina Vergano)

Copyright Rina Vergano 2011

The next Word of Mouth event is Mon 17 Oct with ‘Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You’ by Molly Naylor