Puddles Pity Party presents a seven-foot-tall clown, singing sad songs with a warm baritone voice. Having reached the quarter-finals of America’s Got Talent, sung the song for a John Lewis Christmas advert and amassed almost a million followers on YouTube, he’s set himself the difficult task of winning over a London audience.
He starts by welcoming the audience, shaking each of their hands as they walk in before coming and sitting down with them to watch a pre-show information film about loneliness. This film becomes a little derailed by Puddles’s fondness for Kevin Costner, who the audience is informed will be turning up later. Then he comes on stage, plays with his buttons, curtseys shyly and the music starts.
Puddles is a big clown and he has a big voice. He also has an astonishing control of that voice, both in pitch and tone. He very much enjoys bringing the microphone closer and further away for different effects. His diction is also extremely clear, when he covers songs, they reveal lyrics the audience may never have noticed.
Whilst he sings a range of songs and styles, they are all ‘Puddles-ised’, becoming soulful ballads in the process. Even Britney Spears’s Toxic manages to sound like an ocean of lament. The songs are matched with melodramatic gestures and poses, lending them a hyper-sadness that often comes back round to funny. There are some typical clown stuff in there too: he flings tissues in the manner of Elvis flinging scarves, he juggles plastic bags and fails to launch confetti – all pared with little shrugs, pouts and quivering lips.
The music ranges from Billie Eilish to Elvis, with stops for Tom Waits, George Michael and Ozzy Osbourne. A particular highlight is the performance of Space Oddity with a quick change element. Less successful is a Gilligan’s Island/Stairway to Heaven mash-up, probably because Gilligan’s Island never screened in the UK.
He interacts a lot with the audience, encouraging filming and distributing audience members’ phones to each other willy-nilly. He brings audience members down to act as props, to hold up signs and to play a range of elaborate cardboard instruments. All these interactions are done in mime, Puddles only reveals his voice to sing. He’s also keen on cuddles, very keen, on exiting there’s a queue to cuddle him.
Despite the audience interaction, fun little videos, bits of mime and other elements of variety, the energy of the room flags after the first hour. Perhaps a mood of theatrical depression can’t maintain ninety minutes, or perhaps it’s the lack of a live band. Live instrumentation would have injected a little more spontaneity, as the songs themselves had to be performed to pre-recorded tracks.
That said, Puddles Pity Party is a wonderfully odd, strangely soulful and toe-tappingly catchy night out and it’s worth catching.
Runs until 18 March 2024
