Emilie Autumn calls her fans Plague Rats. I apparently am now one of them as I have told many people about this show - it was fun to experience and fun to talk about. I went to this relatively cold - intrigued by the photo and blurb on the Smalls Web page, I listened to some music on the web and was sold by the story of Emilie being a former student of the Indiana University Music Department, trained on violin there before no longer being there - why is not clear from the bio - scandalous clothing? bad vibrato? the possibilities are endless. The song Thank God I'm Pretty grabbed me as well. The picture above is from the show at the Funhouse and, I think, needed to give some feel for this performance. Emilie is back by her cohorts, the Bloody Crumpets - Veronica, the Blessed Contessa, Captain Maggot, Apprella.
A small crowd of loyal and with it fans - in proper(?) plague rat costumes knew what was happening and were ready to participate. What words describe these happenings? - part musical performance (only live music were the vocals, some electric violin and more electric harpsichord), part burlesque, part vaudeville, with highly anticipated set pieces such as the Rat Game with Veronica, a Sponge bob Square Pants sing-a-long led by Captain Maggot, an ongoing Mad Tea Party complete with "tea" somtimes sprayed into the audience and biscuits thrown into the audience, the petite Captain Maggot dancing on stilts making her about 9 feet tall and much more...
The somewhat controlled mayhem was quite entertaining in it's own sake. What put this at another level for me was the complicated layers of meanings at play. Early on was a performance of I Want My Innocence Backby these vamping lingerie clad women. Unique to this show was the fun they had with perpetrating all of this in an old church. While I got the impression from the crowd that much was anticipated, there was an amateurish quality to the proceedings as well. I don't mean this as a negative. I'm trying to capture the non-slickness of this, the Anti-Brittney show. This deconstruction of Victorian Phallocentric morality with Lesbocentric play seemed to be quite empowering to the audience members, many of whom dressed for the show.
Other specific highlights for me were: hearing Thank God I'm Pretty live, in a decommissioned church no less, the I'm Blessed line had great irony there; the always fun Bohemian Rhapsody; Emilie playing an extended violin solo despite some equipment problems she was having. I loved the solo, on electric violin, which started with some Bach quotes though distorted with electronic effects and finished with some nice improvisation. Finally, a sing-a-long of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life finished the show on a great note.
I would like to see them again. I wished my Emily had been there with me as she would have liked all the layers and the pro-woman empowerment. I haven't even tried to explore the indictment of the Mental Health systems that were also present to me. One last thing is that unlike any other musical performance I have seen, Emilie encourages video and youtube placing of videos - check them out, there are lots.
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