Boulaye puts on a bizarre show, underscoring her charisma and humour but signalling her serious limitations as a vocalist 

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Beginning an Aretha Franklin tribute with a breathless rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ was a questionable move by Ms Patti Boulaye. Yet the New Faces winner and theatre actress has found handsome success in cabarets across the country with her Aretha & Me residency, where she seeks to pay homage to the Queen of Soul while comparing and contrasting their lives. ‘Yes I know what you’re thinking, “who does she think she is”,’ Boulaye remarked with self-deprecating wit

The decision to perform an Aretha Franklin tribute is not audacious in itself.There are plenty of British (soul) singers who can honour the Queen of Soul with gusto. Incognito vocalist Vanessa Haynes recently had a strong showing at The Pheasantry, while leading singers such as Michelle John, Vula Malinga, and Mary Pearce regularly feature Franklin’s material in their live sets. Put simply: you don’t have to be Aretha Franklin to sing the hell out of an Aretha Franklin song.

But you do require a certain vocal prowess. Which Boulaye – for all her charisma and entertainment value – lacks. At least to meet the demands of Franklin’s challenging repertoire. Whichever way you cut it – range, tempo, phrasing, pitch – Boulaye was out of her depth, seemingly compensating for her vocal shortcomings with erratic choreography. With her Musical Director Allan Rodgers on keys, Boulaye was also accompanied by a synthetic backing track with tinny backing vocals that further cheapened the set. Clearly tiring by the end of the show, she fell out of sync with the music on ‘Respect’ and undershot the high ‘freedoms‘ in ‘Think’.The audience did the heavy lifting on ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’.

Yet I can’t deny that I was entertained by the spectacle of it all. Harking back to her role in Carmen Jones on the West End, Boulaye began the second set by sauntering through the audience singing ‘Dat’s Love’, caressing some of the male patrons. The most bizarre turn of the evening was her performance of ‘Be Happy‘ from her self-penned musical Sun Dance. Utter pandemonium.

Boulaye’s commentary comes much more naturally than her singing, even if her links to Franklin’s life were somewhat tenuous or surface-level. Both grew up in god-fearing households, both participated in a roster of philanthropic activities, and both had turbulent family dynamics etc. Franklin’s life was used as the pretext for meatier discussions about Boulaye’s own life and career. Indeed, Boulaye certainly has some interesting stories to tell: her family home in Nigeria was frequented by post-colonial African politicians including Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt; her father survived a firing squad during the Nigerian-Biafran War; Boulaye used to be a nun before stumbling into showbiz by accident.

Admittedly, there was a snippet of the set that worked. Diverging briefly from Franklin’s songbook in her second set, Boulaye rendered Bessie Smith’s innuendo-laden ‘Kitchen Man’ and Alberta Hunter’s whimsical ‘Rough and Ready Man’. ‘His frankfurters are oh so sweet / How I like his sausage meat,‘ she sang with a faux-coyness as the audience guffawed. Boulaye’s half-sung/spoken delivery and theatrical command of these blues ditties hinted at the type of show she should be doing.

(Image copyright: Patti Boulaye)