Cuckoo Town Guide to ART

'The Cuckoo Town Guide To Art' at the theatre upstairs, St.Ives Arts Club 8pm,

July 29,August 5,12,19,26th- all the Tuesdays. 2014

Tickets £6 from Cafe Art  or at the door from 7.30

www.CuckooTown.com

Shanty Baba and Dhyano have put this intoxicating  cocktail of surprises together and perform with panache and subtlety.

My favourite joke was an explanation of how to sculpt a dog in stone, but it's the way Dhyano tells it of course. His catwalk fashion show is also amazingly hilarious and accurately observed.

Shanty is more low key and his poetic piece towards the end of the show moves into a reflective and gentler mode to complete an excellent evening of entertaining pieces about art and art in St.Ives.  Dyhano accompanies him with atmospheric improvisation on the lovely piano in  which the Arts Club now rejoices.

I  started out thinking the artist called Sean was fiction, particularly as his names is S.Landers, but on checking online I find it's all true. He features in the section on ego.

Terry, Barbara, and many others come into the show, the latter alarmingly giving birth on stage.

There is local reference to our ex-mayor's shop and a competition to make a work of art to be judged by the audience. 

I loved the installation proposed for the Tate, presumably when Nick Serota is next on the Dali Lobster phone he will finalise the arrangements.

Don't miss it. 

You can take a bottle in and sit around cabaret style tables to enjoy a very unusual evening of original humour from these two performers who make a good team.

 I would say its unforgettable, but there is so much packed in that you may need to go twice to take it all in.

Dhyano at The Arts Club, St.Ives August 2013

  

DHYANO

What to say? It's not easy to describe this zany 'futurist' show. In brief I would say it was brilliant and Dhyano is a comic genius.

It's two hours but not too long.

On the 7th there  were two guests, Shanti Baba and Steve Litherland who were both  entertaining.

However, it's Dhyano we had gone to see, whose humour is very visual , but also with a love of sounds generated by himself and the audience when he invites participation,( and this is not creepy or threatening). 

Dhyano throws himself into the act with amazing intensity and wit, commenting on his Uncle who sold Pilchards in Italy on his return from Australia, on the self absorption of artists, the origins of Tate, on seagulls, train travel, socks, Italian food.

 However, mentioning a few of the many subjects touched upon does nothing to convey the Dadaist nature of absurdity and complexity which connects diverse remarks and is delivered so eloquently, almost frighteningly ludicrous at times, touchingly soliloquising at others, and engages us completely so that we emerge refreshed into the night, trying to remember it all, enthralled  and delighted.

Don't miss this.