Review: SALTY BRINE: THESE ARE THE CONTENTS OF MY HEAD, Soho Theatre
Photo credit: Da Ping Luo
After the barnstorming success of Bigmouth Strikes Again, Salty Brine makes a triumphant return to the Soho Theatre with the latest offering from his Living Record Collection. These Are The Contents Of My Head collides the track list of Annie Lennox’s solo album DIVA with snippets of Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert to underscore a story of female empowerment and liberation from suffocating domesticity. The narrative itself is a chopped salad of Kate Chopin’s rebellious and society-shaking 1899 novel The Awakening and the story of Salty’s own youth as a child of divorce. Through the lens of a precocious and effete queer boy, we watch a mother holding her family together while losing her sense of self.
Salty Brine is the definition of a diva. A powerfully charismatic commander of her own cabaret, Salty channels the most sensational and the saddest aspects of beloved divas and queer icons Judy Garland and Bette Davis, powerful women with a core of vulnerability. This ‘diva’ theme is the thread that ties together the seemingly disparate source material, which is all blended together in a remixed cabaret score by the extraordinary music director and performer Ben Langhorst.
Like the women that crowd Salty’s story, These Are The Contents Of My Head is bold and brave. Salty Brine is a magnetic storyteller, and has created a narrative that is not only compelling but inspiring and uplifting. At the present time when it feels like we have regressed to 1920s levels of social oppression for women, queer people, and especially trans people, Salty Brine’s hymn to the divas who bucked the trends and struck out alone against a society that held them down feels like a breath of fresh air.
Since their last appearance at the Soho Theatre, Salty has been rightfully upgraded to the Main House which hopefully means that more people can witness this uniquely esoteric project that layers stories and influences, music and genres.
Beside the glittering Salty who is, in turn, brash and brassy, muted and melancholy, Ben Langhorst is a hysterical featured accompanist whose interjections are comedy perfection.
Set and lighting designer Christopher Bowser deserves considerable praise for the complex storytelling of the lighting that gives shape and form to the layers unfurling endlessly within Salty’s head.
You need not be an Annie Lennox fan to enjoy These Are The Contents Of My Head – this is an almost absurdly rich show about love and loneliness that has something for everyone, and occasionally everything for someone.
Sensitive, witty and a hell of a lot of fun.
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett
