La Rue show

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 6

La Rue show

his sallies with the audience, but also shared by his seven-strong company.

The performance itself carries unavoidable echoes of his television shows, but without the plastic wrapping. Simply, it is ruder and cruder. Yet it slips smoothly from patter to song-and-dance routines with just enough time for Danny La Rue to emerge in yet another dazzling costume.

Emerge he does, as everything from Mae West and Joan Collins to a Mother Bunny and, finally, as a beautiful parody of Marlene Dietrich. All, of course, in costumes which grow increasingly glamorous as the evening progresses. The comic routines themselves depend heavily on sexual innuendoes which Mr & La Rue delivers with a

relish that rapidly infects the .audience. This in spite of the fact that some of the lines are chestnuts of such antiquity he should be ashamed to revive them. What marks Danny La Rue out is his ability to vivify, in front of an audience largely foreign to it, a purely English tradition of showcase which leans heavily on well worn formulas, both spoken and musical, to flesh it out. Yet a feeling of freshness rarely disappears, as much because he is able to work often subtle changes within familiar formats.

At the close, Danny La Rue appears uncostumed to appeal to the audience in song to accept him, his world, and his creations as they are. It hardly needs, recording what the audience’s enthusiastic response was.