Frank Sanazi’s Das Vegas Voodoo Rooms
There can’t be too many shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe that keeps you chuckling long after the end – as well as necessitating the strong desire for a large brandy afterwards. Yet, for me, Frank Sanazi’s Das Vegas Night was a pretty good excuse for combining both!
To be honest, after many years of attending the Fringe, I don’t think I have ever seen a show quite like it. First of all, we have a Las Vegas style cabaret set-up, presided over by Mr Sanazi himself. A self-styled joking, swinging crooner, complete with strategically dark combed over hair, and a tiny moustache, whose relaxed stage presence occasionally erupts into the twisted, demented form of Der Fuhrer!
Then the classic Sinatra songbook is given a comprehensive “swastika revamp” that will either make you shudder with shock – or reduce you into convulsions of laughter. And laugh, I must confess I did. Although it may well have been a very uncomfortable form of laughter, as Frank cracks the most un-PC one liners imaginable. The audience then reacts (aghast with horror one minute and giggling the next), at the sheer nerve and audacity of his unconventional delivery.
Supporting this “Aryan Ol Blue Eyes” is an odd (very odd) group of acts that include Sadami Davis Jnr (who at one point during his act, drops his trousers displaying a rather baggy and grubby pair of y-fronts!); two burqa wearing magicians and a female exotic dancer/stripper who physically and literally leaves nothing to the imagination.
So a real mixed bag of entertainers (if that is indeed the correct phrase?), and one can’t quite visualise Frank and his “Reich Pack” performing at the Royal Variety Show before her Majesty? Although I would love to see the startled look on say, Simon Cowell’s face, if they ever turned up on “Britain’s Got Talent”!
However, if you are looking for a show that tickles the funny bone in the most subversively black manner imaginable, this “Totalitarian Chairman Of The Board” could be just the guy. Although for the true Sinatra aficionado, it may be just a little too sacrilegious to fully appreciate, but if you are in need of a right good laugh – regardless of how tasteless it may be – it may well hit the “deutchmark”!
A warning however – it’s not a show for everyone, and certainly not something to take your old Granny or maiden aunt to see. Yet (although I am only carrying out orders!) you could do worse than spend an hour in the company of Frank Sanazi for an evening of gloriously dubious and morally challenging humour, that echoes the reaction of one lady during the memorable opening of the Broadway show “Springtime For Hitler”
– “Well, talk about bad taste…”
Just don’t forget to wear your best black shirt for the occasion.
Lawrence Lettice