Henry Queen of Squats ☆☆☆
The Vault Festival London
Henry Moss is a short man. Or an average-sized girl, as he describes himself. He also does a very short stand-up show, at London’s Vaults Festival, lasting about 45 minutes. Or about 50 TikToks, as he would describe it. That certainly captures the structure, a bubbling up of short selfie stories, smatterings of dance, some impressions, including Judi Dench and Harry Potter, and various other observations on what it is to be a burnt-out millennial whose main LinkedIn skill is ‘Pizzazz’
The tiktok stream of consciousness introduces us to his upbringing in Australia where his supportive mother, convinced of his nascent celebrity, always introduced herself as ‘Henry Moss’s Mother’. He was a kid with dreams of the stage and that eventually brought him to London for the heartbreaking rounds of auditions, rejections, shortlists, and the survival jobs that enabled him to keep food on the table and stars in his eyes. In addition to Pizzazz, he slowly acquired the Mean Girls’ outer shell that is necessary to endure the white-collar penury of metropolitan office culture.
Life isn’t just about making money. He also looks for his tribe of gays, and the Ultimate Gay Survivor prize of finding, and keeping, a London boyfriend. Cue sympathetic smiles and head nods from his audience of 25-35-year-old Women in the Arts, whom TikTok analytics has already confirmed to him are about 75 percent of his audience.
Moss’s delivery is slightly under-rehearsed but infectious. This is a Work In Progress and presented as such but seeded with Moss’s mischievous point of view he whisks the audience along with him at his breathless 50 TikToks pace. It’s a good start to an evening at the Vaults Festival. Shows begin around 6pm, last about an hour or so and there is time to see multiple shows, grab a pint or a burger in between, and keep going til the cabarets of the later evening begin.
https://vaultfestival.com/events/henry-moss-henry-queen-of-squats/
Review by ANDREW HEBDENQueerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing, and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
Labels: 2023, Andrew Hebden, cabaret, Henry Moss, Henry Queen of Squats, London, review, The Vault Festival
