When Lynn Ruth Miller started her show by stripping down to her underwear I wondered if I had wandered into the wrong Soho basement. But this is no ordinary burlesque act. Miller, originally from Toledo, Ohio, is an irrepressible 80-year-old and only started performing onstage when she was 71. “I didn’t want to peak too soon,” she explains.
Her cocktail of jokes, music and costume changes, Granny’s Gone Wild, won a cabaret award at the Edinburgh Fringe but her humour got a thumbs-down from Simon Cowell when she was on Britain’s Got Talent. A more accurate verdict nestles between these two extremes. The Joan Rivers-style quips about geriatric sex are funny at first but there are only so many times one wants to hear about respirators and weak bladders.
The gravel-voiced jazzy songs are the real highlights. They range from the uplifting to the sentimental and help to tell the story of Miller’s very full life, which has included two husbands, an overprotective mother, an eating disorder and a mid-life relocation to San Francisco. She never quite mastered the art of housewifery, as she explains in rhyme, aided by pianist Robert Pettigrew: “I just can’t cook, that’s why my meals have a Halloween look.”
Miller’s follow-your-dream message is hardly original but she is undeniably an inspirational living tribute to her philosophy. This is not the slickest set in town but it is unique. It must be the only gig where the performer pelts the audience with incontinence pads.
Until March 22 (020 7478 0100, sohotheatre.com)
