Suffering from a bit of a misnomer, Mike Hatchard’s musical interlude represents a little escape from the hubbub of South Bridge. His first festival show away from his stage name, the artist-formerly-known-as Marvin Hanglider provides an hour of lounge style, sub-cabaret piano and vocals in several different directions. Tonight, we are treated to some modern jazz interpretations, an improvised sideswipe at Broadway and amiable informed chat, all interspersed with a good helping of self-penned witty ditties.
For his improvised piece, Hatchard shows how easy it is to write a Lloyd-Webber showstopper, using just a sharpened wit, three names and a handful of sentences prised out of the audience. Whilst musical, his on-the-spot composition is up there with any of his peers, and when comical, the music falters at just the right rate to showcase the cheesy and obvious punch lines which, far from being hackneyed, are emphasised with such staged and laughable farce as to pull them off.
One really can’t help but feel that the name of the show is all that keeps a contented audience at bay, and ironically, the title song is the low point of the sixty minutes, being a disjointed, tempo changing, stop-start affair that never really gets going. It stands at odds to the remainder of the material, which relaxes and amuses the gathered throng of, well, three people.
But I was one of that handful of witnesses present, who saw a performer put so much effort into his time under the lights, who gave so much to so few under extreme circumstances, and as a result,… Quintuplets gets full marks for effort, not to mention a hearty recommendation to visit CO2 at Oxygen for an hours worth of late night lounge style entertainment, and some comical, musical relief.
3/5
Simon Ferguson
