Sandra Bernhard at the Shaw Theatre

Saturday evening saw a trip up to Kings Cross to see Sandra Bernhard at the Shaw Theatre.

The night got off to a strange start with an acoustic set that no-one seemed to be expecting and this showed in the reception the bloke got. This included people talking through his songs and an exchange at the back between two people telling each other loudly to 'piss off' and someone trying to get the clapping started before the bloke had finished his song. Very rude behaviour but the bloke kept on playing anyway. Why do acoustic people seem to specialise in slow, dreary songs? A few nice fast sing-alongs would've worked so much better with an apathetic/hostile audience. And what an odd audience. It seemed like half was made up of gay men and lesbians, a quarter were obvious loud media types and the rest were an assortment of older couples.

The main event was Sandra, who appeared at the back of the stalls, singing , 'And I Am Telling You' from 'Dreamgirls' as she slowly and graciously descended the stairs to the stage, picking on one man as her ex-lover from a dirty weekend in the Brighton Novotel and that struck terror in my soul... audience participation. Then she got up on stage telling us of her life as a black woman and how this was a middle class white man's world and the show was off and running.

For the first half hour she paced back and forth across the stage (keeping the spotlight person busy), speaking non stop about what a crazy world we've created, shutting up a heckler down the front twice by pointing out it was her show and she wasn't responding to attention seekers while at the same time telling us stories about her own and Angelina Jolie's children, making a subtle comparison with the fool in the audience. Clever and stylish, I thought. She will enable audience participation, not the audience.

I can't describe what she said, it's all blur of fast talking quips, tales of her life and tales-of-her-life-I-suspect-were-invented, songs loud and quiet and lots of laughter. I loved her story of how she adopted Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and others of that ilk after a near car crach and looked after them for the day, buying paper and crayons and scissors to keep them occupied in the back of her car, taking them shopping and showing them the real world and inspiring Britney to be the star she really is. I *so* want that story to be true.

Sandra then vanished while the band played on (and guess what? the acoustic bloke at the start turned out to be her guitarist) and came back a minute or so later in Madonna pastiche to sing a song clearly inspired by Madonna and Prince. Bows, lots of clapping and exit.

I enjoyed Sandra, her stories about her girlfriend and her daughter, her glamorous, globetrotting lifestyle, her biting political comments and her general stream of consciousness madness. How can someone talk so much non-stop and still have something to say? On the way out I stopped by the merch stand to buy the CD of the show which includes some of the material I heard that night, but not all by any means. If you get the chance, go and see her.