Christine Bovill - Speakeasy

Tickets - £22.00

Following on from her successes of PIAF, PARIS and Piaf to Pop, the award-winning five-star Glaswegian chanteuse, Christine Bovill returns with “Speakeasy”.

With her heart-melting, smoky, evocative voice, Christine cherry-picks some of the most celebrated songs and engrossing stories from the Jazz Age: the era of Prohibition, women's suffrage, radio, flappers, vamps, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Lindbergh and Bessie Smith. She also travels to Les Anness Folles in Paris and to Weimar Berlin. A decade of heroes and villains; of sex scandals; literary giants and criminal low lives – all beautifully bound in the seductive rhythms of jazz.

Nominated for best female vocalist at the Scottish Jazz Awards 2020.

Christine Bovill is a Scottish gem. All the talent of the cabaret divas found at the Big Four, yet none of the airs and graces. This lovingly-put-together hour, blending 1920s American song with reflections on social and cultural history, ought to win hearts – just like her previous Fringe shows, Piaf and Paris, have.
With that message in our ears, her version of Ol’ Man River brings a tear to the eye and Brother Can You Spare A Dime? sends a chill down the spine.
Bovill’s voice is soft-edged and soulful, with a slight huskiness lending character to the vibrato. There’s no artifice to it – it’s honest and human – so even though she doesn’t have the personal backstory of Josephine Baker (married twice by age 15) or Bessie Smith, whose songs she sings, you trust her as their interpreter.