Wiltons Music Hall – until 25 October 2025
Reviewed by Phil Brown
4****
I’ve never seen Wilton’s busier than on this occasion. You could tell straight away from the nature of the audience and the pre-show buzz that we were destined for something unusual and very special.
Whilst Musik is new to me, the palpable air of knowing anticipation suggested that was not the case for many of the folk present. In fact, the show has been around for a while….and without doubt deserves to be around for a whole lot longer.
The genesis of Musik is over 20 years ago with the premiere in 2001 of Closer to Heaven, a musical written by Jonathan Harvey and the Pet Shop Boys, in which, retired rock glamour puss Billie Trix (played by Frances Barber) is the narrator/MC for an everyday tale of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll set in a gay club. Barber’s performance apparently stole the show and the legend of Billie Trix was born, along with the idea for a one woman show based on her life of excess as a hedonistic scenestress, for whom class A drugs are her “plus one”.
In a threeway collaboration between Jonathan Harvey (script), the Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe) who wrote 6 songs specifically for the show, and Barber, a cabaret-style show was developed and premiered at the Edinburgh fringe in 2019 – eighteen years later. (It’s always surprising how long the gestation of art can take!) This was followed by a brief run in London in 2020.
Now it makes a well directed (Terry Johnson) return to possibly the most suitable London venue for it. With shades of Cabaret suggested by the gothically garbed Billie Trix, her bitchy teutonically flavoured monologue of tragicomic decadence seems to fit the decayed splendour of Wilton’s Music Hall like a glove.
The character of Billie Trix looks like a composite of several famous rock chicks – Nico, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg come to mind. Frances Barber inhabits the role like a world weary natural who has had her fill of excess, but can always rise to the occasion. She has a good voice which improves as the show goes on – sounding at times like Nico and at others, uncannily like Neil Tennant. This is a superlative performance in all respects, particularly her brilliant comic timing.
I can only assume Jonathan Harvey must have had a whole lot of fun developing the script. Clever, smart, pointed, I think there is still scope for refinement, but to describe it as surreally outrageous, is like saying Dali was slightly quirky and Warhol enjoyed a touch of colour. Talking of which, this is more or less where Hildegard, a self declared mongrel escaping from a delinquent Mutter in the post war ruins of Berlin, steps on the escalator to the big time.
Having arrived in New York City and slept between the toes of the Statue of Liberty, she connects with Warhol and the Factory and becomes Billie Trix. The predominance of soup in her past diet inadvertently inspires Andy’s art. And so it goes on. Thereafter, rather reminiscent of Peter Sarstedt’s late 60s song Where Do You Go To My Lovely, the competitive name dropping (and hilarity) intensifies as Billie finds herself influencing or present at most of the significant moments in modern culture and history. “Someone once said to me – Billie your’e so pretentious” ….”I think it was Jean-Paul Sartre…”
The six Tennant/Lowe songs more or less equally interspersed across the hour long performance are fine examples of the Pet Shop Boys at their melodic best and provide a necessary contrast, light relief in a sense, to the intensity of Billie/Barber in full flow. It’s possible to stream the six songs – Mongrel, Soup, Run Girl Run, Ich bin Musik, Friendly Fire, For Every Moment on Spotify.
The set (Lee Newby) is a good example of less is more. I like the 18 TV sets which flank the stage and which show the wonderful back projections accompanying the action (Leo Flint). It would be easy to overlook the importance of the video stream playing in the background, but as well as being interesting in its own right, it also provides invaluable, well matched cues for each element of Billie’s life story.
Overall – an uproarious evening of high class, unique entertainment. The occasional raunchy content may not be for everyone, and that might mean it will never break out from cult classic status. However, it’s hard to imagine a better use of an hour than immersing yourself in such a wild ride.