The candles flicker. The rain beats down. And the creature stirs. New York Cabaret artist Salty Brine makes his London debut with Bigmouth Strikes Again: The Smiths Show in Soho Theatre. Witness a hideous monster come to life as Salty ventures into the dark and disturbed, twisting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein around The Smiths’ post-punk, indie classic The Queen is Dead.

Salty Brine is the creative force behind The Living Record Collection, a dazzling expedition into the heart of popular music, imagining track lists as blueprints for evenings of musical mayhem. Salty Brine deftly weaves together iconic, popular albums with major cultural touchstones from classic literature to opera and beyond, performing each album with a live band and his own unique brand of memoir-esque storytelling.

A cabaret artist, writer, and actor, Salty has created 20 wildly-different evenings of theatre built around as many (equally diverse) albums; From  transforming  Fleetwood Mac’s hit-filled, drug-fueled exposé, Rumours, into Second Hand News, an evening of scintillating gossip where the truth is anybody’s guess to Queen’s epic masterpiece A Night at the Opera overflowing with the romances, murders, trysts, and tragedies of a hundred different operas from the last two centuries, with many musical diversions in between. The Living Record Collection is currently in residence at Joe’s Pub where Salty regularly premieres new works from the collection.

What can we expect from this show?

BIGMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN (The Smiths Show) is a mashup of The Smiths remarkable album The Queen is Dead and Mary Shelley’s timeless novel Frankenstein. With many surprises along the way! It’s part rock concert, part musical, part stand-up, part drag show and part literary event. We careen through the album and the novel with irreverent joy and a lot of laughs and, in the end, hopefully we find something together about what it means to really need people.

How do you feel, as a well-known New York Cabaret artist, making a London debut?

I’m brimming with excitement! I have loved the culture of the UK for many years. (I’ve got an addiction, if I’m honest.) I have visited London several times. It’s one of my favorite cities. (And you know for a New Yorker to say they love another city… that’s not a small deal. We’re obnoxiously proud of our hometown.) Truly, I’ve wanted to play on a London stage for a very long time. I simply cannot believe that this dream is coming true.

How did the Living Record Collection start?

The Living Record Collection was born out of my love for whole, incredible albums. Albums that you want to listen to from track one… straight through to the end. I wanted to celebrate not just great songwriting but great album making. Which is an art in and of itself. Along the way I discovered an opportunity for really grand storytelling. That’s my background in the theater. That’s what was always interested in. Epic storytelling. Slowly over five or six years the LRC transformed from evenings of music that celebrated albums into glittering theatrical events that use albums to tell stories.

How would you describe your personal style and your performances?

I think a lot about this. About identity and performance. In my day-to-day life I’m… not subdued… but unassuming maybe. I’m a little shy with new people. I can be funny and charming at a party. But I’m really a homebody and an introvert. AND THEN… I have this creature inside me that loves the spotlight. He’s always there lurking just under the surface. And he’s spectacular. That’s my stage persona. It’s still me. 100%. But he’s larger than life. He sparkles. He has a lot of energy. And he’s very warm and loving too. He adores getting dressed up in costumes and running around. BIGMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN is, in part, and exploration of this creature that loves the stage.

You are a cabaret artist, a writer, and an actor. With which of the above do you identify more?

Ooo that’s such a great and difficult question. Because they’re really all jumbled up for me. I’ll go with writer. Which I can’t believe I’m saying! Because my younger self was so afraid of calling myself a writer. It seemed far too scary. But the writer in me is the inventor. And he is who creates the worlds in which I get to run around as an actor and a cabaret artist. I write largely for myself. But I do write things for other performers as well and then I get to watch them run around in my worlds. It’s thrilling. I love thinking through every moment an audience gets to spend inside one of my shows; What they’re going to see, hear, feel; That’s my guiding star.

How did your career start?

Now we’re back to the creature haha! I was hooked on theater very early on. I found, as a kid, that I had this innate ability to entertain. It took me many years and a lot of training and a lot of thinking and experimenting to learn how to harness that natural ability. I was a very determined kid. I was going to make theater. Eventually I studied at New York University. Which plunked me down in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York and gave me a network of peers who I still work and play with to this day. Each of us was always making something. And we always helped each other… designed and acted and directed for each other. And so I worked. (For very little or no money and a lot of side hustles.) But I created my own jobs in the theater in New York. The LRC is the culmination of all those years and collaborations.

How important is literature, music and drag to you?

Oh it’s just everything. All three of those really. And I’ll say what I really love to create are shows that have a mix of high-brow and low-brow. For example, in BIGMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN I tell the story of this very famous, very respected, very old, very important, VERY beautiful book. And yet the show is just STUFFED with silly jokes and dirty jokes and campy reverie and on and on. And The Queen is Dead as an album jolts back and forth brilliantly between silly and serious. And drag can be both high and low art. It can be clowning madness. And then when the right chord strikes on the keys and the light hits the shimmer of my glittering hair you suddenly feel this stirring majesty inside you; This tremendous magic force that is wrapped up in the nighttime and freedom and mystery. And so it’s really the clash of all these things. That it can contain as much as it does. It astounds. I love that feeling.

What do you have in common with your drag persona?

Big emotion. Drag is an exaggeration. It’s hyperbole. And I’m prone to it. I have really big feelings in my own life. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to drag. I can make things appear as big as they feel. It’s like I want the whole world to understand how massive things are on the inside. There’s a whole universe swirling around in there. It wants to be seen and understood. And is that even possible? That’s maybe the question any one of my shows is asking. The big question.

Who are your inspirations?

So many people that I’ll surely forget some here but… Bette Midler, David Sedaris, Judy Garland, The Muppets, Pee-wee Herman (Paul Rubens who we just lost. I’m devastated.). And of course I have a list of Brits who have shaped everything I’ve made… Kenneth Williams, Quentin Crisp, Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders, Peter Brooke. I could go on and on.

Tickets for Bigmouth Strikes Again are now on sale at sohotheatre.com.

BIGMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN

Created and performed by Salty Brine

Directed by Shaun Peknic

Music Directed & Performed by Ben Moss

Stage Managed by Devin McCallion Fletcher

Production Designed by Christopher Bowser

Costume Designed by Kate Fry

Original Arrangements by Jeff Cubeta

Co-produced by Renee Blinkwolt, Lucy Jackson & Devin McCallion Fletcher

Venue: Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D 3NE

Dates: Thu 31 Aug– Sat 16 Sep, 9.15pm 

Running Time: 90 minutes 

Tickets: from £14 

Age Recommendation: 16+ 

Phone: 020 7478 0100 

Website: sohotheatre.com 

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