Joe Stilgoe and Liza Pulman

After about a year and a half, the duo of Liza Pulman and Joe Stilgoe is gathering momentum . The two clearly have a lot in common and look like they get on well together. They have an album out, A Couple Of Swells (Absolute). There is a website lizaandjoe.com. And they have just done a week’s residency as a cabaret duo in the studio theatre of The Other Palace (formerly St James Theatre) in Victoria. I couldn’t make it to either of the press nights earlier in the week…which might have produced a rather more useful review than this one, but ho hum. I went along to see for their final show of the week on the Saturday, where they were playing, singing and having fun in front of a completely full and appreciative house.

What stays in the mind is quite how good Liza Pulman’s stagecraft, fabulous vocal control, instinct for/ skill as harmonising singer are – she says singing in harmony was part of her growing up and of the grieving for her father who died when she was a young girl. And also had a stint in the Glyndebourne chorus. Maybe above all, though, I kept marvelling at how completely flawless her diction is. Every word not just crystal clear, but enjoyed and savoured too. Joe Stilgoe, as pianist/ singer and creator of new, clever and interesting ideas always seems to have another new trick up his sleeve. I enjoyed their take on the hilarious Dudley Moore / Marian Montgomery version of “Close Your Eyes”. It is good on the album, but has developed further, and it is even funnier live. (video below) . Their “double songs” also work well, especially the splicing-together of the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs “People Will Say We’re In Love” and “If I Loved You”

And then there was an extraordinary thing which happened when Liza Pulman was introducing the Kern / Hammerstein song “The Folks Who Live on the Hill”, a celebration of how life can be as a long-term couple. ‘Twenty years…thirty years…’, she mused, looking straight at a couple in the front row. The couple started doing the “Price is Right” gesture for “higher” with their arms, and Joe Stilgoe popped them the question: how long had they actually been together? “Fifty three years.” And then came the interesting bit: it emerged that there were two other pairs in the room whose coupledom was even more longevous than theirs: another couple who spoke up took the honours with 58 years.

Is that just a random occurrence, or might it be telling us something. Does it have any “granularity”, as data scientists call it. What does it tell us about the audience which packed the venue for this relatively newly-formed duo? I can’t help thinking that those three couples were from a section of the audience who will remember Joe Stilgoe’s father (Sir Richard Stilgoe 1943-) and/or Liza Pulman’s mother Barbara Young (1931-2023) from the time when they were both showbiz stalwarts and fixtures on our television sets. Perhaps such updated nostalgia is – and will always remain – a part of the appeal of the Pulman/Stilgoe cabaret act.

That may be, but this is 2024, and my hope is that they continue to have opportunities to perform more together and build on what is already a very strong partnership and a highly enjoyable act.