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1927 - Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

Marks and Spencer’s women’s-wear department isn’t renowned for it’s 1920s drama queen range, let alone any appropriate for sunnier climes. It’s here, however, nouveau cabaret troupe 1927 are to be found stocking up on uncharacteristically loose-fitting outfits. The night before they fly out to Sri Lanka with last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit, Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea, in tow, such purchases, it seems, are essential.

“I look like my Mum,” opines Suzanne Andrade, who makes up a quarter of 1927. “All we’ve got is these wintry vintage outfits that we wear onstage, but now we’re all kitted out.”

Regardless of any sartorial inelegance, one can’t help but wonder what Sri Lankan audiences more used to vintage Shakespeare will make of Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea’s black-humoured irreverence.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Andrade says of the Herald Angel award-winner, which arrives in Glasgow this week as part of an Arches showcase of fringe works. “We’re doing the show as well as workshops in silent film acting, so what they’ll make of it all I don’t know.”

Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea is a wonderfully wicked concoction of frightfully horrid yarns acted out by Andrade and chums in the style of an old-fashioned parlour entertainment, complete with Lillian Henley’s live piano score adding silent movie melodrama. The most inventive twist of all comes via Paul Bill Barritt’s magnificent series of film accompaniments, which Andrade and Esme Appleton then interact with.

The end result appears to have been laced with arsenic by the naughtiest, most psychotic girls in the school, its nasty little compendium of twisted vignettes resembling Improbable’s eqyally pasty-faced smash-hit, Shockheaded Peter. Such a playfully visual European art-house sensibility bookends 1927’s exquisitely corrupted sense of English politesse.

“None of us have seen Shockheaded Peter,” Andrade insists, “even though it’s been mentioned a lot. We’re all big fans of The Tiger Lillies, but to be honest we don’t go out to the theatre much. Paul’s hardly seen any theatre at all, actually, and we’re more interested in the sorts of things Chris Morris does. We’ve been compared to people like Forkbeard Fantasy as well, so it’s companies who aren’t really doing straight theatre who we apparently resemble. But it’s not like we’re just working with a group of actors. Esme’s my best friend, and is a very visual sort of performer, and Lily’s my brother’s best friend. So everyone has their own special kind of skill they bring to the show.”

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea, then, is understandably a fascinating hybrid, which began life as a series of short stories and character-based monologues performed solo by Andrade on the spoken-word and comedy circuit. Fascinated by Grand Guignol films which she continues to study following an MA on the subject, Andrade cut her hair into a classic Louise Brooks bob and gradually developed the cut-glass manner that would go on to shape 1927. The company name was chosen quite deliberately to evoke the look of such a highly-charged era..

Andrade performed some of her stories on Mixing It, Radio 3’s now sadly defunct experimental music programme. It was here she first came into contact with Barritt, who contacted her to find out where he could get a CD of her work. Once an alliance was formed, Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea was honed over a six month period doing the rounds of London’s new cabaret scene. For all 1927’s debut full-length show appeared to come from nowhere in the Fringe melting pot, it was a slickly crafted product that demonstrated how film can be incorporated effectively into the creative process on a lo-fi budget. Seven months on, Andrade sounds almost blasé about the show’s success.

“We knew we’d get an audience,” she says, “because it had already been tried and tested. But we didn’t expect the critical acclaim at all, partly I think because of our received ideas of what theatre critics can be like when coming to something that doesn’t easily fit into any category. But we knew we’d be alright.”

1927 may have adopted the stylistic apparel of the past, but in terms of company make-up and artistic working methods, Andrade and co are looking towards the future with a wit and panache that proved irresistible to most. Where, though, did the show’s twisted core come from?

“I grew up in this weird little village in Cheshire,” Andrade confesses. “It’s terribly affluent, but is full of wife-swappers and all sorts of things going on behind closed doors.”

Since Edinburgh, 1927 took the show to London, New York, Bruges and now Sri Lanka. Such attention came as a direct result of the Fringe, and Andrade is fully aware of the double-edged sword of expectation while developing new work.

“We’re hoping to get something ready for summer 2009,” Andrade says, “though whether we do Edinburgh again, I don’t know. Our audiences now since Edinburgh are much more critical, and although we’re quite prolific in terms of the amount of material we generate, we’re going to work at our own pace. We’re thinking of a longer narrative this time round, and are toying with ideas about animals and children. At the moment we’re just getting background stuff together, and are playing around with shadows and silhouettes; stark black and white stuff.”

Whether any of this ends up as part of a theatre show at all, however, remains to be seen.

“We’re really wanting to explore film in a live context,” Andrade reveals, “and play around with different disciplines by pushing the boundaries of form. Out of that maybe will come a new form, I don’t know. But there might come a time when 1927 don’t just work in theatre. Our next thing might end up a film, an album or an event. We’re really interested in new writing, but that might end up becoming an illustrated book. We’re not quite sure where we’ll end up, really.”

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea, The Arches, Glasgow, March 11-13, 8.50pm (preceded by Mile End at 7.30pm)
http://www.thearches.co.uk/
http://www.19-27.co.uk/

The Herald - Tue 11 March 2008

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