BETJEMAN’S FAB FREAK-OUT

Robert Thicknesse recalls a thrilling “collab” between the then Poet Laureate and a group of avant garde performance artists

IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE CACOFIDDLE THAT DID it. On a December evening 16 months ago, given a brief evening-release by the clown-suited prison-warders purporting to run the country, I found myself at a beguiling concert in a Hampstead church where the little band, as raffish and bohemian as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, swayed and tootled through their tunes. As it happens, the music was seventeenth-century French groove, not the folksy boogie you might expect, but the atmosphere was festive and bibulous, and among the instruments there it stood: the legendary, chopped-down double bass bespangled with bells, a bunch of percussion and a rudimentary swanee whistle — handling a bangin’ sword-fight air from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s music to Le Bourgeois gentilhomme with verve and aplomb, what’s more. But had time itself been…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023

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