2ND - 7TH AUGUST - JERMYN STREET THEATRE
Dazzling Divas is a musical journey illuminating the lives and work of legendary performers Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin, Mama Cass, Karen Carpenter and Dusty Springfield. Seven trailblazing women whose lives lit up the world and whose influences continue to this day. Relive their music and stories - each one as extraordinary as the next in one magical evening.
With Michael Haslam – Musical Director/piano; Oz Duchaine – Bass; Edward Hall – guitar; Gerry Berkley – drums.
Issy tells us, "I started to write the show in 2018 when my eldest daughter was doing her GCSE's - I wanted to be at home and available to her if she needed any support with exams and had turned down a touring opportunity but at the same time I needed to be working. So I began researching and writing and learnt the show whilst walking the dog after school drop off and I was booked for a try out at The Pheasantry in London. The response was phenomenal and I decided to develop it further into a two act show with other dates in London and at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester with a tour in the pipeline. But then covid struck and everything was put on hold. When we all emerged the lovely Jermyn Street Theatre programmed the show last summer 2021 as part of their Footprints Festival and I was subsequently nominated for an Offie Award which was very exciting. I am thrilled and delighted to be back at Jermyn St again in the first week of August for a longer run."
"I have always been fascinated by these women who challenged the strict social constraints of their time, holding out for what they believed in no matter what cost to themselves or their careers, refusing to conform to type. They all pushed so hard for equal opportunity, equal pay and equality for all, paving the way for generations of women who came after them. The more I delved into their lives, the more involved I became and the more extraordinary I realised they were, each one original and brave. What a debt of gratitude we owe them."
"Whether it was Karen Carpenter who said 'All I ever heard was girls don't play drums, I picked up a pair of sticks and it was the most natural feeling' in a world when women playing drums was rare or Janis Joplin - Newsweek Magazine wrote of her performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Summer of Love - 'this volatile phial of nitroglycerine, named Janis Joplin, has blown the rock world wide open singing with a tortured pain that has become her trade mark. This white girl from Port Arthur Texas has become the first female superstar of rock music'. Or Mama Cass - New York Magazine wrote 'In America, the most weight conscious nation in the world, Cass Elliot has become a glamour girl. She is a star not despite her weight or because of it but beyond it'. Dusty Springfield was deported from South Africa in the 1960's for singing to an integrated audience ”I’m not political - I just think people should be able to hear me sing irrespective of colour, creed or religion.’ Marilyn Monroe was so fed up with the lack of control and always being pigeon holed the dumb blond that she started her own production company at a time when it was unheard of to do so - now everyone is doing it! Patsy Cline was a women of firsts – she was the first female country singer to headline a show, she was the first female country singer to headline a show when there men on the bill, she was the first female country singer to have cross over hits in both the pop and country music Billboard charts - she was also the first female solo country singer to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. When Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit in 1939, a song about the lynching of African Americans in the deep south she became a target for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics - the legendary record producer Ahmet Ertegun hailed it as 'a declaration of war' and 'the beginning of the civil rights movement’."
Issy van Randwyck is a triple Olivier Award Nominee most recently seen in The Boyfriend at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Other theatre work includes Song of Singapore (Minerva Theatre and Mayfair Theatre, London), The Man Who Came to Dinner, Arcadia and A Small Family Business(Chichester Festival Theatre); Kiss Me Kate, Two Gentlemen of Verona and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regents Park Open Air Theatre; A Little Night Music and Once in a Lifetime at the National Theatre. Film and television work includes the recent film of Blithe Spirit with Dame Judi Dench; Christopher and His Kind with Matt Smith; Endeavour; Kingdom; Spooks; The Nevers, Downton Abbey. She was also a part of the satirical group Fascinating Aida in the 1990’s. Her many recordings include The Glory of Gershwin with Larry Adler produced by George Martin.
Buy tickets now from https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/dazzling-divas/