Girl Talk
at Pizza in the Park, London
31 July - 5 August 2000

Sandy Starr

Political correctness does a funny thing to popular music, particularly when it comes to feminism.

Songs such as 'A Woman's Touch', 'Keep Young and Beautiful' and 'When I Have a Brand New Hairdo' tend to end up either of two graveyards. On the one hand, they live on unironically in ongoing West End musicals and seaside town tribute shows, shielded from the attention of culture vultures. On the other hand, they are given short shrift by the modern woman and wiped from the collective memory of music history.

Girl Talk gives these songs an alternative afterlife. Three of the UK's best female singers - Mari Wilson, Barb Jungr and Claire Martin - have taken these awkward ditties and decided to turn them into parodage. No, don't reach for your dictionary, I just made that word up. What I'm trying to convey is a happy marriage of parody and homage, with the self-consciousness of the former and the fondness of the latter.

It takes a little getting used to, sitting amidst the smoky tables and fine wines of London's Pizza in the Park and watching three such self-aware singers belting out the most unlikely brace of songs for the noughties. But a magic combination of panache and skill, not to mention a healthy amount of between-song jokery, means that the whole thing comes off. A mad mixture of Abba, Doris Day, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Blondie, and Bacharach, the only thing that these songs have in common is that they should never have survived the twentieth century. Thanks to this show, they have.

Wilson, Jungr and Martin are all fine singers in their own right, and when they get together the effect is memorable. Perhaps the noble art of parodage is best summed up by Jungr's rendition of 'Terry', a one-hit wonder from years gone by. Quite why a tragic love song about a man called 'Terry' should be so funny is not obvious until one tries to sing the name with sincerity, at which point one realises precisely why it so rarely appears in song. It is not a Terry that woos Maria in West Side Story; 'Terry and Isolde' is an opera that Wagner did not write - Barb Jungr kindly reminds us why.

This run of Girl Talk is criminally short, lasting only a week, but if you missed it there is still hope. Jungr will be performing songs from her remarkable album Chanson at the Club Pleasance, Potterrow at this month's Edinburgh Festival. Book your tickets early.