REVIEW: Ann Hampton Callaway, Crazy Coqs ✭✭✭✭✭

Feminine Persuasion – Anne Hampton Callaway in Cabaret

Crazy Coqs

20 April 2016

5 Stars

American singer-songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway is back for a week at Crazy Coqs, this time with a show celebrating women songwriters. It's the first part of an epic season of cabaret artists performing as part of the London Festival of Cabaret.  It’s an evening with a heady blend of standards that takes in everyone from Peggy Lee to Adele.

Some of you will have seen Ann before, either solo or during one of her seasons with her sister Liz, and know what to expect. For those who haven’t, an audience with Ann Hampton Callaway is something extraordinary. She remains one of the finest interpreters of some of the greatest writing talents around, and last night she surprisingly added Adele to that list with a stunning take on Someone Like You.

Ann’s set included Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman’s Witchcraft and Les Paul and Mary Ford’s How High The Moon? It was a heady mix performed with all the soul and deep-felt emotion you could muster. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprises in store by saying more.

I’m ashamed to say last night was my first visit to Crazy Coqs, but it definitely won’t be my last. Fabulous cocktails and intimacy were the order of the night and it suited Ann’s style of performing perfectly. Just Ann, and eighty of her closest friends and she sang to us all as individuals.

Magic!

ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY PERFORMS AT CRAZY COQS UNTIL 23 APRIL 2016