Gil Hates Everything

This show is short – I like that – and a revue – I usually like that – and features one singer singing eighteen songs with lyrics by one guy, Mark Campbell, and music by eighteen different composers – which is interesting. The result is eighteen vignettes of single gay life in New York – which I’m not intrinsically too interested in, but it’s a lot better than “Naked Boys Singing”, the last such show GHM listened to.

With no plot, no characters, no script, and probably very little staging, what you hear on the soundtrack is exactly what the show is. This is one reason I like revues: I can give them a writeup based on the material, and it’s difficult to imagine that I’m shortchanging the show on the grounds of not seeing its dramatic spectacle and whatnot.

But this is an unusual design for a show, and it puts the load squarely on Mark Campbell’s shoulders… and the singer, I guess, but what we’re really asking here, far more than in most shows, is: are Mark Campbell’s thoughts on life interesting? And the answer is, yeah, they’re quite interesting. Not every song is a hit, but most of them work. Plenty to chuckle at, and a fair bit of self-examination. “Exit Right” is about sleeping with an actor (“his eight-by-ten smile”), “He Plays The Cello” is about someone who can’t (and there’s a bad cello part in the music, too), “The Man In The Starched White Shirt” is really good, “Spring” is energetically hateful of the season of love, “He Never Did That Before” is a very funny song about a long-term sexual partner who has suddenly learned a new trick in bed – but from where?… these are some of the obvious highlights. As usual, the comedy comes earlier and the more adult emotions later; longing, fear of death, fear of lack of closure and fulfilment, and loss; these are on display in the last few tracks, from which I would particularly recommend “Our Separate Ways”, a gorgeous song on a par with William Finn.

Revues must start and end strongly, grabbing people’s attention and then sending them from the theatre feeling fulfilled; this show ticks those boxes, with an amused look at a lonely man’s empty bedroom in “Here In My Bed”, and a gentle love story in “The Night You Decided To Stay”.

As a gateway to queerspace this is nonconfrontational and inclusive; many of the things that happen to this man happen to everyone, and the different things are couched in a way that would help straight folk understand what the people involved are thinking – or failing to think. It has moments of sweetness, at least one moment of tears, and, pleasantly, no moments when I was thinking “I wish I wasn’t listening to this”.

This is definitely worth a listen, and I wouldn’t say no to supporting it live. I reached the end of the CD before I started getting bored, and bear in mind this is for basically an album of voice and piano. The average quality was high, assuming you can stand this kind of thing at all, and for singers this seems like a slightly obscure source of material worth checking out for audition and performance.

Random Panda awards “Songs From An Unmade Bed” eight out of ten pieces of bamboo. A good start to the week. Here’s a live rendition of “He Never Did That Before”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wps4-C6D1tc

(originally posted 2009)