Following the success of Looking for Me Friend, Paulus The Cabaret Geek is back in the world of Victoria Wood with his new show, What Wood Victoria Do? Directed by the multi-award-winning Sarah-Louise Young, this is a show not to be missed.
“This brand new show takes an even deeper dive into the world of Wood. It is a celebration of those women who don’t mince their words but make everything better with a cuppa and a mutual distaste for next door’s extension: navigating friendship and loss
amongst tea towels and village halls. Sit back and enjoy a fresh batch of brilliant tunes from The Victoria Wood Songbook.
Though Vic may be gone, she has left behind so many nuggets of advice to help us build community based upon camaraderie, gossip and Custard Creams. So come and get your second helping of music, mirth and macaroons!”
Where: On tour from 25 Sep, the show opens at the Victoria Wood Theatre in Windemere and continues into April next year.
Ticket link: https://thecabaretgeek.com/show-dates-tickets/#wwvd
You’ve been associated with the work of Victoria Wood for a while now, and you’re clearly an admirer. What is it about her that you really like?
Yeah, so I guess publicly, I’ve been associated with Victoria since about 2019, just before the pandemic really. There were a lot of stops and starts getting my first show, Looking for Me Friend, on the road, but by 2022 we were actually at the Edinburgh Festival, and after that touring took off properly, until earlier this year.
Why do I admire Victoria? I liked her very much in interviews. She would often be asked about being a comic and being a female comic, and people would often try to draw her into a debate about that. She would often say, “Well, I just wish it was a non-issue.”
I wish the right person, with the most talent, who worked the hardest, got the job, whether it be a comedian, a surgeon, you know, Prime Minister, whatever. And I admired her stance on, “I don’t have to be the poster girl or person for anybody or anything. I’ve chosen to do this work. I work hard. I try my best to make it good.”
And that should be enough. And I’ve admired her for many, many years.
I also think she’s quite an equal-opportunity comedian, insofar as she will take the Mickey out of everybody.
You know, I think a lot of people think that Victoria Wood is pro-women, pro-the North, pro-working-class people, and I don’t think that’s true. I think that is often the lens through which we will see her characters and her stories and the places she takes us. A working-class northern woman, for example. But, you know, she’s also given us all of these hugely high-status, arch, often monstrous characters who are southern and very well off.
Whether that be, you know, one of Celia Imrie’s characters in a scene on TV, or Julie Walters playing Victoria’s sister, Margaret.
And after she died, I stumbled upon this lovely quote from Julie Walters, and I think this is perfect. I’ve been using it in Looking for Me Friend for years now. Julie said, and I completely agree, that what Victoria did best was the pomposity of daily life. And I think that needs doing, and she did do that, whether or not she was talking about men or women, or southerners and northerners, or whatever. That’s the universal thing: pomposity of daily life is universal.
What does the new show bring to the table that was lacking in Looking for Me Friend? And what is your favourite song in the new piece?
Well, Looking for Me Friend was a dialogue. I had the lovely Michael Rolston on stage with me, playing the piano, but also doing backing vocals and some terrible accents. In many ways, he was Julie to my Victoria. And in between songs, it would be a game of sort of almost catchphrase tennis, where we would chuck bon mots around the room, and often the audience were there to give us the punchline before Michael could hand it to me.
So it was a dialogue, and that was deliberate, because Looking for Me Friend is all about celebrating the fandom and community and the lexicon and wordplay that Victoria has left behind. I don’t think she meant to create a modern Polari for a queer generation of people growing up in the ’80s and ’90s like myself, but she did, whether she meant to or not.
What Would Victoria Do?, in contrast, is a play with songs, and I tell a totally different story in a totally different way, and I tell it alone.
Victoria saw Joyce Grenfell live, a solo on stage, and spoke many, many times about how affecting it was to watch a woman standing alone on stage. And she said, as a very young child, “I wanted to do that.” That’s what I’m not quite sure what that is, but I wanted to do it.
And this desire, despite working with all the established people and having a rep company — Duncan Preston, Susie Blake and the other people I’ve mentioned before — and a sometime double act, really. I think many of us think of Julie Walters as a double act, certainly in the ’70s and the early ’80s, but she never stopped desiring to stand alone on stage.
And finally, it’s something I’ve done very little of in my cabaret career. There’s always been a live pianist who’s been my straight man or a foil in some way, or a duo partner, or I’ve been part of the cast, or whatever it is. So I’m excited to explore that and, at the grand age of 51, finally stand alone on stage.
Looking for Me Friend was all about nostalgia. It was about talking about the things that we miss about her. What Would Victoria Do? asks, well, what next, and how to navigate the modern world without her advice — or the advice of her perfectly to-the-point characters.
So, you know, we have a moment where we meet a modern version of Patricia Routledge’s Kitty, who may or may not have an e-scooter and be addicted to Monster Energy drink. You know, that is some of the joy and the fun in What Would Victoria Do?
What’s my favourite song in it? Oh, God. Because it’s so obscure, and because it’s such a strange little song, and I found it literally halfway through making the show. I was completely different. So I was supposed to be in it where it goes…
And it’s called “I Work in a Salon”, and it’s about a trainee called Corinna, who isn’t really very good at talking to customers, but she’s only in charge of shampoo, and so it sort of doesn’t matter.
And there’s sort of an exploration of the early days of the world of work, and navigating it — something which, yeah, perhaps some of the younger generation today could learn something from. So my favourite song at the moment, anyway, is “I Work in a Salon”.
You are working with Sarah Louise Young again as your director. Do you have a shorthand of working together now? And what does she bring to the project?
Well, I mean, we definitely understand each other better, being in a rehearsal room for the second time around. Definitely, there are ways that I have to work that she doesn’t, or things that I need that she doesn’t, and we definitely found those out when working together on Looking for Me Friend.
I think what Sarah brings more than anything else — I mean, there are so many things. What Would Victoria Do? involves a lot of story about my childhood and about my mother, and Sarah Louise knew my mother very well. She’s known her since we were about 13, and they’ve holidayed together, they were in a choir together, and there are things I know that she told Sarah, that my mum told Sarah when we were teenagers, which are very, very private and poignant, and about a mother caring and worrying for a queer kid.
She has been privy to that for, you know, 40 years, so she brings a respect and a loyalty for my mum that I’m very, very grateful for in putting together a show which is tremendously personal and which, to some extent, tells somebody else’s story — someone who is no longer with us.
And then, on a really practical level, I think it’s the storytelling. You know, we’re both quite famous for our use of Post-it notes when building and working on a show, and she won’t let the desire to sing a song because it’s funny, or because I want to, or because I sing it well — that will never, ever be enough of a reason for a song to make the final edit.
We have to be story-led, and Sarah is the best for me at holding that story and holding me, the storyteller, to task and making sure that we’re always serving the story.
How would you describe your cabaret style? For those who haven’t seen you before, what influences do you draw on when creating a show?
There are so many different answers to this question, because I can be, and have been known to be, very purist about what makes a cabaret, and what ingredients should go in and how. You know, basically how to do one. I don’t know that either Looking for Me Friend or What Would Victoria Do? are, in fact, cabarets, but I’m known as the cabaret geek online, and I’ve done so much cabaret over the decades that there’s this sort of default that what you’re coming to see is a cabaret because it’s me doing it. And I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that, but that is the purist answer.
So, putting that to one side, you’re still working without a fourth wall, and perhaps for most people, that’s the biggest part of the ingredients that makes a cabaret. And I definitely was doing that with Looking for Me Friend and continuing to do so with What Would Victoria Do?
They’re never a monologue. They are a dialogue, where the second person is you guys, the other side of the lights. You don’t get to speak, but just because somebody isn’t speaking doesn’t mean that you’re not in dialogue with them.
And so I think that’s what I try very hard to do: to be in dialogue whilst controlling the situation in a way that’s very manufactured compared to having a chat with someone.
And I like to individualise the people. I don’t like going out and seeing a sea of massive, faceless heads, and I don’t like the audience being in the dark. I like to be able to see the whites of their eyes, and, you know, I like to get in really close and question if they’re not clapping along or smiling or enjoying themselves as well.
I bore you until you either leave or you join.
So what’s my style?
I suppose I take prisoners. And one of the reasons I’m a bit hesitant answering this question is because my style has changed so much over the last 10 years, and this Vic work has seen that change in me and helped facilitate it to a certain extent.
I’ve done a huge amount of work in drag, and I have sort of put the heels and the corset away now. I used to be, you know, a very sort of brash, big-mouthed clown, and I’d like to think I can come into a room with a bit more subtlety, as I’m now in my 50s.
So, yeah, the clown keeps evolving.
And I keep asking the exact question that, you know, you asked me, so watch this space.
You are opening the show at the newly named Victoria Wood Theatre. What’s it been like working with them? And what’s next for the show?
Well, I mean, until I get to the theatre, I can’t really say, apart from a few very friendly emails with an administrator called Fliss, but she seems very nice so far.
The theatre used to be called The Old Laundry. Because guess what? It used to be a laundry.
It’s actually in Bowness-on-Windermere, and I believe that there’s a Beatrix Potter exhibition which is on the same sort of grounds, or at least, you know, next door. And Victoria would go there, to the theatre and the Beatrix Potter exhibition, as a sort of respite from her busy life and fans and the demands of the work — a bit of a retreat.
It was, and still is, run by two friends of hers who are also members of the board of the Victoria Wood Foundation.
So, I mean, I love that you’re asking this question, because of course it’s a massive deal to be accepted by the Victoria Wood Foundation. And another member of the board has helped me to source sheet music for songs, some of which have and some of which have not ended up in the show.
But they have been great and very supportive for several years now, and I’ve been sending donations of a portion of profits from both my show and my merchandise to the foundation. This will be the fourth year that they’ll receive a cheque in November.
In fact, funny enough, years ago, in November — as ago, they lost the cheque because they’d never had a donation before. As a charity, they don’t have a giving-money-away fund, and they were so confused to receive some that they mislaid it.
So it’s an honour, of course, this year, being the 10th anniversary of her passing, and choosing to rebrand and rename the theatre just a few short months ago. It was a big deal, and I’m really, really glad to be able to say that, in that first year of its new name, we were there.
So let’s just hope people enjoy it.