If you’re looking for trouble in the form of a distinctly different dramatic evening, you’ve come to the right place. Trouble, that is, in a good sense. The Jane Horrocks show at the Young Vic in London is definitely the right way to go, especially for those who know the origin of its title: “If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me.” (For the curious, more on this title later).This is an evening which the star has surely been dreaming about since her teenage years, doubtlessly miming with hairbrush in front of the bedroom mirror. It includes her versions of songs originally by many of her idols growing up – British Northern male bands from the 1970s and 1980s.For those in the audience who fancy some spiky reminders of their youth too, this has a lot to recommend it. Tracks such as “Atrocity Exhibition” by Joy Division are doomy dirges but rightly critically acclaimed, and it all gets kicked into 2016. The direction by Aletta Collins is imaginative, with the four dancers continually twirling around in suggestive clinches. The enormous electrical socket in the background fits in well with our heroine’s declaration, on an inspired version of the Human League’s “Empire State Human”: “I want to be tall, tall, tall, as big as a wall, wall, wall.”A little more humor like this may have helped with the Fall’s “My New House,” which loses some of its laughter lines by being slowed before it explodes with rage anyway.This isn’t karaoke, it isn’t a musical, and it has very little spoken dialogue. Fortunately the choice of material is knowledgeable and Horrocks’s voice is often good enough to carry the lyric. For those musical aficionados, or saddos like this critic who had been around for long enough to personally know some of the bands covered, this is likely to be at least an enjoyable evening, assuming it is possible to get over the mild sacrilege of some of the reinterpretations. Occasionally with a number like “Isolation,” the reworking is revelatory. Others stay closer to the originals thanks to an impressive group of four that includes Kipper and Rat Scabies of the Damned. For those less familiar with these numbers, the hour will hopefully inspire a deeper appreciation. The title incidentally comes from a line in a rare Soft Cell demo called “Girl With the Patent Leather Face,” which was on an obscure compilation put out by the record company Some Bizarre. It is one of the numbers that doesn’t actually make it into the show. Go and see it for curiosity value; it is worth trying for the passionate performance alone of the Smiths song “I Know It's Over,” which is enough to bring a lump in the throat as Horrocks continually declares: “Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.”That might have been a better conclusion than Morrissey’s later composition "Life Is a Pigsty” – though one suspects many of us would have nominations for other songs she could have tackled. “The Death of a Disco Dancer” or “Temptation” would have sounded really good to0.
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