OF all the acts at his Meltdown Festival, this was the only one that Morrissey chose to introduce personally. He didn't make a big fuss, politely batting away a heckle before leaving the stage for the sashaying entrance of Lypsinka, the leggy creation of John Epperson.
This may be one of the most enchanting acts to visit the South Bank this year. Lypsinka is partdrag, part-conceptual artist. To say that the Mississippian merely mimes to a non-stop selection of torch songs as overblown as yesterday's gales hardly does justice to his creative, witty persona.
Sketches and vignettes pour forth, propelled by a fastand-furious soundtrack of sampled music and movie dialogue. It is a technique that leaves no margin for error and Epperson hits every mark.
In one of his most challenging set pieces, he answers a sequence of telephone calls mimicking increasingly exasperated voices without missing a beat. Another showstopper is singing an alcoholic variant of The Twelve Days Of Christmas while getting increasingly pie-eyed.
Many of the film references would fox a cinephile, but the more identifiable ones run the gamut of camp iconography from Joan Crawford to Natalie Wood via Gloria Swanson. Sunset Boulevard hangs heavy over the proceedings in terms of glamorous frocks and melodramatic lighting.
There are Hitchcockian motifs too, as the mood swings from comic to manic in the blink of a mascara'd eye.
A smaller venue would have earned brownie points for intimacy and last night's crowd could have fitted into the Vauxhall Tavern with room to swing a feather boa. But this remains an intriguingly funny, genre-busting oddity and it's here for just one more evening. If the precision-tooled Wayne Rooney is not your thing, this deft display might hit the right note.
Repeated tonight. Information: 08703 808300.
Lypsinka! The Boxed Set At Morrissey's Meltdown
