Literary Cabaret Wed–Sat, March 4–7, 8pm Café Monet Zacateros 83 80 pesos

Artistic Licence returns
By Meredith Beaumont

By popular demand, the Literary Cabaret returns this March with a repeat of its January show, Artistic Licence.

Rick Davey, Marilyn Bullivant and Reesha Browning, the irreverent British threesome, once again will explore the art world in their unusual tongue-in-cheek fashion. Works of English literature, both light and enlightening, will be liberally interspersed with songs and skits.

Touring the gallery of their program, one sees a number of famous, and infamous, artists and art works.

1. Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring,” looked at from a radically different point of view by John Updike.

2. Vincent Van Gogh’s starry landscapes and tragic life move Davey to new musical heights.

3. Francisco Goya’s greatest scenes analyzed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

4. W.D. Snodgrass visits Giverny to report on Monet’s water lilies.

5. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” accumulates dust, and satire by the iconoclastic poet David Solway.

6. The whimsicality of Chagall is celebrated with great brio.

7. Requichot’s paper collage flies across the canvas in a new poetic interpretation.

8. Andy Warhol is lampooned, perhaps not-so-lovingly, by David Bowie (who, incidentally, writes a lot of serious art criticism these days).

9. Damian Hirst tells us of the thinking behind “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” a 14-foot tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde.

There will, of course, be a lot more aspects of the aesthetic palette to be portrayed and parodied—in particular, in sketch formation: Bullivant and Browning go to an art opening, Davey visits a tattoo parlor (twice!) and they all attempt to buy something unusual at a craft shop.

Not to be left out, “Painting with Light” will be spoofed with the appearance of five photographers of the twentieth century, in a chorus of questionable origin. Several seriously silly music hall homilies round out the program.