Did you hear the one about the comedy show that turned into a jazz gig? Cybill Shepherd°s last appearance in London was a mainly musical residency at Pizza Express. She has now moved down Dean Street, but the emphasis is still as much on bluesy ballads as candid confessions.
At least Shepherd turned out to be a convincing crooner. When the Moonlighting icon strolled on in a black trouser suit
accompanying a backing track, she was so off the beat she was in a different time zone. She may have an engaging, self-mocking edge, screening a picture from her recent GMTV bad hair morning straight after classic shots from her modelling heyday, but this was not a send-up.
Piano and double bass helped the star locate the tempo, though not before she had rattled through Mad About The Boy so fast it seemed she thought she was late for a hairdressing appointment.
Between songs, theatrical swigs of vodka and some clunky ukelele plucking, there were well-honed anecdotes about Elvis's sexual peccadilloes, Bruce Willis's bottom being hairier than his head and Orson Welles setting her house on fire.
Highs included some camp cavorting on her red chaise longue during Cole Porter's The Laziest Gal In Town, while the lachrymose Graceland Revisited, about Presley's emotional legacy, packed a poignant punch. The short performance had radiant bursts of glamour and sassiness, but it was also ragged and painfully thin on laughs.
Jazz and comedy have often overlapped. By coincidence, former stand-up Lea DeLaria has just started a relatively serious stint at the nearby restaurant where the one-time face of L'Oreal previously sang.
Shepherd jokingly recalled that when she announced that she was appearing at Pizza Express in 2002, friends mistakenly thought she was delivering takeaways. Sadly she didn't quite deliver last night either.
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Cybill Shepherd - Cybill Disobedience
