Another year, another Transpose Pity Party.
L to R: Ray Felix Carter, ILĀ, Jamie Hale, Coda Nicolaeff, CN Lester
The blurby bit
The review
This is the most grown up Transpose Pit Party yet. The last one held in 2023 was dire, as curator and director, Dani Dinger, looked and acted like a miniature version of Sid Snot and I swore never to go again. So, now Transpose is back after a year’s break and all the better for it. This was mainly due to the presence of ILĀ (formerly known as Anil Sebastian), who genuinely can sing and produce music, and Coda, members of the Trans Voices choir. (As an aside, Trans Voices is ‘part of the London Contemporary Voices family’ and one wonders if the choir was set up to get easier access to arts funding, given how committed the third sector is to inclusion? Trans Voices also do corporate packages, providing companies with sound bath experiences.)
SECURESCUE and UN/BOUND were the standout musical pieces, performed by ILĀ and Coda. UN/BOUND, in particular, had some nice choreography alongside the BSL interpreter. One funny thing though was that ILĀ had a coughing fit during the performance and we genuinely weren’t sure if this was deliberate (i.e. him becoming ‘unbound’ – nice coughing acting, if so) or if he was genuinely choking. Either way, it was unintentionally hilarious. However, despite that, it was still fucking brilliant. So much so, I downloaded them both and pretty much had them on repeat since.
CN Lester did some nice numbers too. Yes, some of the lyrics were a bit angsty but we were being clobbered over the head with subtitles at the same time. Ray Felix Carter did a bearable rap, followed by something a little less bearable, as ‘fuck me’ was the resounding cry with floor crawling antics (something of a tradition). It’s interesting though that when the foot is taken off the activist pedal, a real performance is released. Obviously the issues they were singing about were trans-related, but if you were just listening and couldn’t see them, that wouldn’t necessarily bite.
The choice to reinterpret Frankenstein was slightly concerning, given there were gaggles of anxious teenagers in attendance, but moreover plain bizarre. Jamie Hale gave a nuanced performance as Frankenstein and I presume it was due to his/her direction that the other performances were reined in (relatively-speaking obviously). I believe Hale re-read the character’s words, from just after the Monster’s creation, when it is rejected due to its ugliness. CN Lester sang the responses of the Monster to this rejection, though may have switched characters halfway? In the case of trans medicalisation though, who is Creator and who Monster? Was that the question they were posing? Really? I didn’t get it at all. Nevertheless, telling.
Thank you for reading! Sign up to my blog by going to the bottom of the page.
Please share on other forums if you liked it, as I only do Twitter.
The Lies They Tell 