Review: Mixtape, Live Theatre, Newcastle
A cross between a pop quiz and new writing night leads to hilarity as the Mixtape team recreate songs by girl and boy bands in the form of short sketches.
The writers are tasked with writing sketches loosely based upon the songs which inspired them and using their lyrics (although not necessarily in the original order); the odd ad-lib and expletive.
The Mixtapers have been performing this fun, fresh and funky concept for about a year at the Dog & Parrot with an affiliation to Alphabetti Spaghetti Theatre, but this month’s offering sees the team relocate to Live Theatre’s intimate studio space on Newcastle’s Quayside.
In good pub quiz tradition, answer sheets and pens are dished out to the audience upon entry, but the conventionality stops there as the performers bound up on stage for the first of the 27 sketches.
Faced with some horrendous, often disturbing, lyrics, the team play the sketches for laughs using a range of scenarios, such as dating videos, weather reports and an encounter with a wolf.
For the record, they were based on ‘Wannabe’, ‘It’s Raining Men’, and ‘C’est La Vie’. At the interval – sorry, the end of side one – we swap our answer sheet with our neighbouring team; I’m proud to report that I was not exactly in the running for the coveted Golden Mixtape.
Annoyingly, a couple of tracks I actually knew went so far as to include the sodding title at the end of the sketch, meaning that the two points that I thought I had in the bag were also in everyone else’s bags. I feel the same disgruntlement when a quizmaster at a pub fails to fade out a song before the title blasts out for the lesser mortals to scribble on their beer-soaked rags of paper.
Example: a group of schoolboys perv on their schoolteacher, Miss MacKenzie, watching her bend over in a dress. Then, one of the little gits ends the sketch with the line, “That’s what I go to school for.” Grrr. Some consolation, though, when I overheard another team confidently say it was McFly – although they may win the moral high ground.
Mixtape is well worth checking out to test your knowledge of dodgy songs, and enjoy the wonderfully daft writing and performances.
Date of live review: 5 September 2014
Mixtape returns to the Live Theatre next month with a new theme. For further information, see their website or their Facebook page.
