Review: THE TIGER LILLIES: FROM THE CIRCUS TO THE CEMETERY, Cadogan Hall

There’s something of a comforting feeling knowing that, after decades of never quite fitting in, The Tiger Lillies continue to challenge their audiences and push their musical legacy into new territory. Going by this latest show, the trio are still very much kicking against the pricks, still ploughing their own particular furrow, and still staying artistically relevant.

That’s not to say that listen them is exactly comforting given their penchant for gleefully exposing the fetid underbelly of humanity. Their current From the Circus to the Cemetery tour celebrates “The Worst Of The Tiger Lillies”, their first “best of” compilation. This retrospective exhumation of nihilistic numbers from across their almost-35-year-long career may sound as if they are resting on their laurels but that's hardly the case here. In 2022 alone, they had two runs in London with One Penny Opera at Soho Theatre and, inspired by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a revival of their war drama The Last Days Of Mankind at Wilton’s Music Hall. This tour has already been around the UK and will go onto Greece, Germany and Ukraine. They have released umpteen albums but it is in front of a live audience in their customary white facepaint that they make their greatest impact.

Opener “Roll up” from 1996 album The Brothel To The Cemetery is as good an introduction to their Brechtian tales of sin and sordid deeds as any. As lead singer Martin Jaques tells us in his falsetto tones about Frankie the brain-damaged boxer (“he's only got left a year/the local bums take him for a round and for his blood they cheer”), it is the first of many moments delivered without a hint of redemption in the air. Those expecting any maternal feelings to surface in “Mummy” will be disappointed (she’s in a mental home) and “Gangster In The Kremlin” and “Putin’s Truth” proudly display their political loyalties.

The band came to mainstream prominence in 1998 with Shockheaded Peter, their Olivier-winning musical based on the 19th century children’s book from Heinrich Hoffmann Struwwelpeter. From that work, the band roll out here “Bully Boys”, a short story about racist intimidation gone wrong. While the culprits in the German original short story are punished by being dipped in ink, The Tiger Lillies lay out a more final resolution: “Well tall Agrippa foamed with rage/Just look at him on this very page/He seizes Arthur, seizes Ned/He smashes all their tiny heads”. While that show used puppets and pantomime, this latest outing has more of a rock vibe, relying on a sepulchral ambience and overhead spots to set the mood.

In the flesh, The Tiger Lillies are a more rounded experience than on record. There’s audience participation with some call-and-responses antics plus lusty singing along to the chorus of “Banging In The Nails”, quite possibly one of the most gleefully blasphemous songs ever written. Their inventive instrumentation has always been a key feature of this group’s live performances. Jaques goes between strumming a ukulele to operating a squeezebox to tickling the ivories. For his part, Adrian Stout switches between the double bass and the theremin (sometimes within the same song) while drummer Budi Butenop occasionally shakes a pair of clackers.

This is a not a showy gig by their own standards with a lack of theatrical fripperies giving more of a focus to the music. Jaques is a bit longer in the tooth then when he founded the band but he and his colleagues are not ready to become cemetery fodder quite yet. 

The Tiger Lillies continue on tour.

Photo credit: The Tiger Lillies

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