Week Two Reviews – The Copla Cabaret

The Copla Cabaret, Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street at 7.30pm until Saturday May 18th with Saturday matinee at 2.30pm. 

The Copla Cabaret is delicious. It is a feast of music, comedy and camp brought to us from Spain. Alejandra Postigo is an exile in the UK, from the values of Franco’s dictatorship and reminds us of that censored time, which embedded attitudes in culture and generations that still impact today. 

He has a refreshing rapport with the audience. He teaches us that Divas are not only important in Copla (the Spanish style of singing) but they abound and have influenced the ones we may be more familiar with in movie musicals.

He is terrific at not only explaining things, but he does so full of laughter. Copla Cabaret hits all the right notes of the cohort of gay people who love to laugh and cry to divas and their melodramatic music. 

His homage to Julie Andrews and ‘The Sound of Music’ is one of the funniest things in the Festival. His alter ego ‘La Gitana’ connects Copla to drag and his live onstage violinist together with his vocal tech director bring us on a journey of old movies, linguistics, divas, dance, divas, comedy, dictators, censors and more divas. “It’s all about the mouth he says” – well his articulation of a time unknown by many of us about our close neighbours is illuminated with song, footage, comedy, interviews – where his 101 year old Grandmother shines, and real cultural leanring. It’s a joy to be a part of Copla. GF —

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