'Marlene Dietrich meets Peggy Lee... with the musicality of Bacharach and Brel’ hails The Daily Telegraph.
And the West End cabaret sensation they attribute those words to, is coming our way. Miss Hope springs - internationally acclaimed one-time Vegas showgirl singer songwriter and comedian - comes to The Stables on Friday (July 14) as part of her UK mini tour.
Still draped in the sequins she left the Pink Pelican Casino wearing in 1972, towering blonde ex-Vegas showgirl turned nightclub chanteuse and never say die show business trouper Hope plays the piano and sings witty and moving songs from her all original self-penned repertoire.
As well as her hugely popular theme song The Devil Made Me Do It, you’ll hear firm favourites such as Seedy Little Nightclub in Pigalle and never before recorded numbers like Please Don’t Desert us at Dessert which Hope recently found in her archive (a shoe-box under the bottom bunk in the camper van she shares with her husband Irving and his hairdresser pal Carlos).
Hope reminisces, “It was written especially for me by darling Noel Coward over lunch one day back when I was a showgirl in the early sixt - I mean seventies. I fell for him in a big way - same with Liberace.
"There’s something about that understated masculinity that I always seem to go for”.
Hope’s fans are as glittering as her stage wear: Marc Almond, Julian Clary, Rula Lenska, Fenella Fielding, Liza Minnelli’s musical director Billy Stritch, Lady Helen Windsor and Nicky Haslam to name just a few.
It has been said that Hope is cut from the same cloth as Dame Edna, Lilly Savage and Danny La Rue. She responds dismissively “That’s just a bitchy rumour put about by my (very) old pal Goldie Hawn…She’s always been a little bit jealous of me”.
Hope arrives here in the new city direct from her Wigmore Hall debut (the first non classical artistic to play this world class classical venue).
Miss Hope Springs is the creation of composer/lyricist comic actor Ty Jeffries who is the son of the late British screen great Lionel Jeffries (Camelot, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang/The Railway Children).
This is Miss Hope Springs first time playing Milton Keynes. Dame Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth were both governors of The Purcell School of Music where Ty was trained in classical piano and composition as a child.
To book tickets click here
