As the Southbank Centre’s Kiss My Genders season nears its end, it was down to electropop icon Peaches to host the send-off with the UK premiere of There’s Only One Peach with a Hole in the Middle. Essentially a two-hour career retrospective exploring queer feminism, gender fluidity and sex, via music, dance, and acrobatics, the multi-disciplinary show could scarcely have fit the series brief better.
The Canadian singer and producer remains a provocateur par excellence. During the first two songs, she didn’t appear at all, leaving vocal duties on Set It Off to a drag artist and the audience to enjoy the spectacle of two dance troupes, one set topless, and the other wearing sperm-shaped helmets. When she emerged during Rub, she was all-but obscured by a giant blonde fright wig-cum-cape courtesy of anarchic hairstylist Charlie Le Mindu.
Reviving the transgressive costumes and stage props of previous tours, there were vulva-shaped headdresses and giant, phallic balloons squirting silly string into the front few rows.
More memorable was a section featuring aerial performer Empress Stah suspended on a trapeze, shooting lasers from between her legs, and a three-song run in which Peaches and two dancers triggered sounds by breaking vertical laser beams with their hands.
Though visually the 52-year-old has lost none of her power to shock, it was the night’s musical arrangements that truly amazed. A brilliantly bile-fuelled rendition of Free Drink Ticket arrived replete with shivering violins, and triumphant set-closer F*** the Pain Away featured tuba, accentuating the filthy bass squelch of the original.
Kiss My Genders exhibition at Southbank Centre - in pictures
