Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and Los Amigos Invisibles, Pacific Blue Festival Club, reviewed by Garth Wilshere

AFTER the recent “Southerly Buster” storm had quietened I ventured to The Pacific Blue Festival Club for the deliciously, dark quirky vaudevillian style show Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
With silent movie-style black and white movies, animation and live music, the sometimes macabre scene is set.
On the set the often manic pianist and vocalist Lillian Henley in her white mime makeup keeps the music flowing. She is matched to the interactive mime-like performances of Suzanne Andrade in matching white makeup who enunciates the words with deliberation. The opening and closing gag of Esme Appleton feverishly pedaling or running in front of the moving picture screen was very funny.
Andrade and Appleton spark off one another in the joint routines and the silent movie ethic is captured well and always enhanced by the live action in front of the screen of the 10 dark tales told, such as how a cat’s nine lives are lost.
Their dead pan delivery as two daemonic sisters playing with Granny and the plight and end of lodgers, not to mention diseases from door to door salesman to housewives, are just some of many highlights in this hilarious show.
On the final Saturday, Venezualian Latin Band Los Amigos Invisibles entertained.
They are a sub Santana band playing Latin funk and disco. Exuberant and energetic they had dancers up, front of the stage almost instantly, many moving in seemingly choreographed, synchronised gym exercise dance routines, with strangers.
It was non-stop fun, the music not especially imaginative or distinctive but the crowd clearly liked it. It was rhythmic and infectious, the buoyant rhythms getting even the most resistant grooving along.