A statuesque blonde Amazon prowls onto the small stage under the low dingy Underbelly ceiling, decked out in standard rock chick issue leggings and biker boots. With her seasoned band of muso dudes behind her, she crashes into a furious angst-filled number while pulling every available rockstar pose. Blonde hair flying, head banging and legs splayed, tonight is surely going to see Storm Large kick some serious rocking ass.
Then, once the opening song finishes, she launches into a hysterically filthy anecdote about how many severed penises she keeps in boxes under her bed before revealing that when she was a young girl she liked to masturbate to Discovery Channel footage of animals killing each other. Uh, OK. It’s fair to say you don’t get that at a Pink show.
Storm Large (“Yes, it’s my real name. Not my pornstar name. Not my stripper name.”) comes from Portland, Oregon and, following a brief sojourn into reality TV in the States with Rockstar Supernova, has veered away from straight forward rocking out into a show which details the more scurrilous and insane episodes of her life interspersed with songs, both self-penned and covered. Frankly, it could be awful, but Storm is such an awesome and larger than life personality that you end up loving every second she’s up there. This woman is aflame on stage and she has an intimate way with crowds, meaning she knows she can tell us ANYTHING. Her songs aren’t half bad, either.
Whether she’s singing raw-throated blues on a raggedy version of The Faces’ “Stay With Me” or describing in almost anatomically graphic detail how she lost her virginity at the age of 13 to a hot-shot lawyer, the audience just love her. She’s like your nasty but adored sister who gets you drunk and forces you to stay up late.
She also clearly revels and indeed triumphs in the personal damage within her life. Comparing the concept of love to an overwhelming desire to kill a sweet newborn puppy, she then announces she has written the Greatest Love Song Ever. It’s a rousing sing-along called “I Want You To Die”. It sounds pretty much spot on, to be honest.
While Storm extracts maximum humour from some devastating incidents in her personal life, at some points the laughs go quiet as the show begins to resemble a confessional in an LA rock bar. Her mother’s mental illness, which blighted her childhood, and the heroin addiction into which she plunged with an ex-boyfriend are recounted in quite chilling detail. But this seems to be the whole point of the show, that it’s the pain in our lives which ultimately forms us into what we become.
By the end of her hour, climaxing with an uplifting anthem of empowerment and self-belief called “My Vagina Is Eight Miles Wide”, Storm has us eating out of her hand. The audience whoop and cheer as she leaves the stage. Hard to believe we only just met sixty minutes earlier, here “…under the bridge”. It feels like waving goodbye to our new best friend.
Show Times
Till 29 August,10.25pm
TIcket Prices
£10.50