Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen, for an evening of decadent sumptuousness, where you can drown in the dark velvet folds of beautiful music. This is a gothic gem of a show, with a four-piece acoustic band who put the carne into carnival.
Utterly gorgeous and faultless in performance, the songs range from heart-rending ballads and sweaty, paranoid polkas to grand guinol, blood-all-over-the-place, melodramatic showstoppers. The same loving care has been applied to all aspects of this total theatre experience. The lighting – or perhaps darkening would be a better term – heightens the mood immensely, with the band sometimes in the shadows, sometimes uplit like fiends. The physicality of the performers, particularly our host Mikelangelo himself, fills the space. This is often taken to its literal extreme, as everyone not hampered by a Contrabass at some point leaves the stage to sing, play or simply howl among the audience. You will share sweat with these men.
Mikelangelo’s voice could charm snakes from the ground, so deep are his rumblings. His charisma draws us with him into tales of cannibalism, despair and anguish. The Black Sea Gentlemen are very much ‘the others’ of the group in terms of personality, despite attempts to rotate them into the spotlight. This is one of the few failings of the show; the staging of the banter between the songs is a little clunky, and there’s an unnecessary feeling of ‘everyone has to have a go’. In particular, Rufino the violinist is almost inaudible when singing his solo. Other than that, the show is perhaps one song too long, but then all great albums have that one filler track.
Forget your humdrum life, charge your glasses with port and seek redemption in the darkness with the Black Sea Gents. Go on, give in to temptation.
4/5
Hugh Jones
