E3 Group Celebration Showcase

Published Wednesday 7 March 2007 at 11:40 by Mark Ritchie

The ‘Celebration’ reference was apparently due to record profits, which have reportedly been posted for the past year by this cruise ship, corporate entertainment and celebrity supply business.

Showcase compere David Hill, who is also the E3 company chairman, seized his opportunity to make his corporate pitch on the night of his annual flagship event for E3.In the face of such a businesslike opening to the evening, it seems almost superfluous to point out that Hill is a first class variety compere with a natural flair for the task.

A live four piece band led by musical director Chris Summerfield was on hand to provide a true live cabaret feel and the E3 showteam dancers bumped and grinded their way through their opening routine, before compere Hill leapt upon his chance to sing with the band.

Julia Birkinshaw has every reason to feel assured and comfortable on stage. Here is a vocalist with an air of sophistication and a distinctive and well pitched singing voice, which made it all the more mysterious that she seemed in such a hurry to get off. Perhaps it was the thought of some forthcoming high profile work in the foreign holiday market (mentioned by Hill during his introduction), which made her look so keen to hotfoot it away into the night.

A number of celebrity appearances were a feature of E3’s successful 2006 event and this year they surpassed their previous efforts with a genuine ‘royal’ gracing the stage at The Old Market theatre.

According to the glossy magazines, Princess Tamara Borbon is a chum of princes William and Harry and a cousin of the King of Spain no less.

An actress and model of some repute, the pretty princess made a number of appearances on the E3 show, during which she introduced the acts and regaled us with tales from the horsey set. A recent competitor in the Channel 4 series The Games, it seems that if a function needs a royal presence, Princess Tamara is the gal to call.

Steve Hewlett is one of the new generation of innovators who are currently trying to advance and enhance the art of the ventriloquist. Here we have an entertainer who seems to have latched on to many of the tricks employed by some American vents and the approach is one of slickness and polish. However, I’m delighted to note that Hewlett’s natural freshness and likeability have not been eroded by this apparently recent revision in approach, style and substance. Hewlett is both charming and different and his talking toilet roll, his bottle of water sketch and the memories evoked of the great Shari Lewis made impressive, compelling and very funny viewing.

Jamie Alexander-Wilson and Sarah Jane Hassell gave us their ‘songs from the shows’ type cabaret act, which is known as Showstopping. Very strong vocal performances here certainly and bucket-loads of creamy credit should be poured liberally onto this tuneful twosome. Actors cannot always pull off cabaret and many of them simply look detached from their audience, but this certainly was not the case here and Showstopping should have impressed many of the bookers present.

Enter actor Chris Ellison, who plays DCI Burnside in The Bill. Ellison was exhibiting some of his fine paintings, which are mainly portraits, along with sculptor Steve Winterburn. This fine work certainly gave the audience plenty of talk about both before the showcase and during the interval.

Comedy juggler Nathan Zorchak has to be completely barking mad. Anyone who juggles with chainsaws, scythes and bowling balls really has to be one skittle short of a full strike and Zorchak’s comedy patter and zany approach was compulsive viewing indeed. Zorchak is an artist whose style fits snugly into the booking description of many prospective jobs and his diary should be bulging on this showing.

Bringing us up to the interval was remarkable vocalist Jess Russo. There is not much of an indication of an entertainer here in the cabaret sense, but what an incredibly expressive voice she has. Russo is a singer first and foremost and the vocal performance appears to be everything to her, which is all well and good if she is to record and become the star she deserves to be. I just felt that some sort of line in crowd approach and better use of the stage would enable her to sell her remarkable vocal talent and become a true entertainer.

Elliejay is the name of a boy girl duo with a flair for musical theatre and on the night in Hove they were both absolutely superb in every department.

Here we saw a meticulously crafted and well executed fusion of vocal and dance skills, which culminated in a stunning and quite sincere rendition of Sun and Moon from Miss Saigon, which was as touching as it was expressive.

On a night chock-full of glamorous showbusiness ladies, the audience was clearly delighted to welcome the delightful, delicious and de-lovely Vicki Michelle.

Such was her success in the sit-com ‘Allo ‘Allo!, she is now welcomed onto cruise ships and corporate events to deliver talks on the show and remind passengers of the many catchphrases. Well, listen carefully, for I shall write this only once… Vicki Michelle still looks and sounds exactly the same as she did during the hit shows heyday and that, believe it or not was back in 1982.

You know what they say about best laid plans. Well, E3 employee and singer Kelly May was next on stage to demonstrate E3’s live Karaoke, in which a live band and karaoke screen combine to let the punters experience the feeling of singing with a live band. Sadly the gismo caught the gremlins, but we got the idea and the glamorous Kelly May covered things admirably. It was a tad ironic however that in a live show it was the pre-recorded bits that would cause the problems.

Young looking actress and singer Briony Price, we were informed, reached the last few competitors in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s recent hunt-for-a-nun show How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?. Price looks wholesome and winsome but her stagey approach looked at odds with the requirements and expectations of a cabaret crowd. Entertainers need to learn how to feel a cabaret audience and maybe this showcase appearance will have been just the beginning of her education in how to approach the different disciplines that she clearly needs to pick up. The plain fact is that intuition cannot be learned, but crowd approach certainly can.

In all my years of covering showcases I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone quite like Mrs Barbara Nice. Here we have a character comedy creation which has leapt from the imagination of Phoenix Nights actress Janice Connolly and we are told that this mother of four from Stockport is quite a hit in the comedy clubs.

Mrs Nice invited us to follow her “slingbacks of surprise” and informed us that her performance was effected by “the windscreen wipers of forgetfullness”.

For a while I wondered if we (the audience) would end up wiping ourselves with the towel of overstatement. Additionally I can’t imagine a comedian getting away with much of this conspiratorial type of material anywhere else but a comedy club. In these surroundings it is often the case that audiences can often by quite indulgent when they collectively perceive new comic ground being broken. Having said of of this Mrs Barbara Nice, who seems to be an amalgam of the parochial Mrs Merton and the surreal Paul Merton, could turn out to be one of the comic discoveries of 2007.

Closing the whole show out was a dynamic cabaret singer called Emily Reed, who could conceivably teach one or two of the singing actors on the show how to approach a cabaret audience. This was a faultless and powerful performance from a vocalist who goes full throttle, as was emphasised during a clearly heartfelt version of the Whitney Houston hit, I Have Nothing. If I was voting on a panel, as opposed to writing a review Emily Reed would receive ten out of ten for voice, ten out of ten for dress and 11 out of ten for stagecraft and approach.

Again Hill and his team have shown their true colours by showing us the way that all trade showcases should be run and , as was the case last year, the E3 event was a pleasure to attend.