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Soho theatre, LondonThe drag queen’s latest intermingling of Annie Lennox covers, southern gothic literature, Judy Garland and family anecdotes is a bravura feat of idiosyncratic connectionOn his last London visit, Salty Brine mashed up the Smiths’ album The Queen Is Dead, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and episodes from his own life into a pretty extraordinary show. But not a unique one – Brine has made 21 such confections as part of his Living Record Collection project, which now brings These Are the Contents of My Head (The Annie Lennox Show) to Soho. If I found this one less remarkable an achievement, the feeling was offset by admiration that Brine’s Smiths show was clearly no fluke; that he’s created a striking and confident collage-cabaret genre all of his own.Maybe that last one worked so well because Frankenstein described the form as well as the content. The fit is less neat here, as our drag-queen host splices Annie Lennox’s album Diva, a recording of Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, Kate Chopin’s feminist novel The Awakening and (I’m almost done …) tales from his own mother’s failed marriage. In this telling, both the novel’s heroine and Brine’s mum are women struggling to free themselves from marriage and societal convention. Tripping in and out of song, family anecdote and scenes from Chopin’s southern gothic, with additional characters played by scene-stealing pianist Ben Langhorst, Brine’s gumbo doesn’t stint on rich ingredients. Continue reading...