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Festival Review: Transformer--Jonny Woo ****

Lorna Irvine reviews 'a sexy, high-octane romp'.

America in the early seventies was a dangerous place to be. Civil rights, the women's movement and the Stonewall LGBT riots had already cast a mighty shadow towards the decade's end, and the struggle for freedom was growing desperate. Art had to reflect this, and so erstwhile lead singer of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, a scrawny Jewish kid with a bad attitude, was going solo. His music, a febrile hybrid of Weimar Republic decadence, driving glam rock and a New York B movie trash aesthetic, was cutting through the mainstream. He was the cliché before the cliché even existed: street waif, leather-clad punk with Rimbaud and Burroughs in his library—the champion of the outsider.

So who better to pay homage to such an icon than drag performer Jonny Woo? From his panther stalk through the audience to backing singer Miss Cairo as Candy Darling's teasing reveal to some frothing heterosexual men in the audience (that she's not really a chick), the sly subversion of Reed's New York permeates. And it's as raucous, smart and as immediate a piece of cabaret theatre as you're likely to see at the festival, with an incredible band including The Dash's Marc Hayward.

Reed himself often used to sing a beat behind the music when performing live, so while opener Vicious is a pretty straight-ahead cover, the pretty, delicate Satellite Of Love has a rocket up its ass. Hanging Round is celebratory, in spite of the snarling kiss-off in the lyrics: 'You're still doin' things I gave up years ago'. Even Bowie's Space Oddity gets an airing, and there's a pinch (goose?) of the New York Dolls.

Woo is a consistently elegant, drawling Reed, throwing shapes, using a wire for a tourniquet and spitting out catty one-liners with Suzy (Fi McCluskey), his statuesque backing vocalist. She plays Valerie Solanos, and the recreation of her shooting Andy Warhol is contextualised, as she reads from rad-fem manifesto SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men) on the call for baby strikes and an end to patriarchal (mis)rule, alongside singing Andy's Chest. There are anecdotes about Reed's friends Patti Smith, Jackie Curtis and Edie Sedgwick, and an anecdote involving Reed's ballpoint pen, cocaine and a lot of blood...possibly apocryphal.

By the time Walk on the Wild Side is played, it's like a perverse gospel hall. I'm sure Lou Reed, notoriously grumpy fucker and contrarian that he was, would have been appalled by such a homage. But he's not here now, bless him. Transformer is just wonderful—a sexy, high-octane romp through one of the best albums ever made, by one of Britain's finest performers.

At Voodoo Rooms until August 16th.

www.thevoodoorooms.com

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