Photo – The All About Evil Cabaret.

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A few years back I was involved in a very unusual cabaret show at Manchester’s Cornerhouse Cinema as part of the Abandon Normal Devises (AND) Arts Festival. The cinema was screening a spoof horror movie, All About Evil, made by outrageous US drag-queen Peaches Christ (Joshua Grenell). In accompaniment to the film, Peaches and some of the movie cast came over to present a pre-movie stage show and local burlesque and cabaret people were invited to join in too, including me. The show we presented was utterly outrageous. The group of us in the photo here includes myself (with the giant lobster claw and Cthulhu mask) and Peaches herself, in the wig hair wig). The dance we did took a lot of rehearsals, and ended with us murdering the twins on stage (they are also in the movie). As the film is about a psychotic librarian, Joshua then hit on the idea of staging a mock protest by burlesque dancers pretending to be librarians offended by their on-screen depiction, picketing the cinema. Some of us went out to argue with the fake-librarians while in our costumes and I was out in my crab claws when the police arrived in riot gear with shields, as someone had reported the publicity stunt as if it was a real serious incident. The police left once they realized what was going on. Just before the movie aired, Joshua had the librarians invade the cinema to perform their own cabaret sets from the stage and even from the audience seats. It was an incredible, surreal night and Joshua /Peaches is one of the greatest entertainers I ever worked with. I hope he and his team return to Manchester again soon. Arthur Chappell