Alejandro Postigo’s Copla: a Spanish Cabaret is an utterly gorgeous show, as informative as it is entertaining at The Other Palace
“We’re going to start with a Spanish rhythm”
Alejandro Postigo is determined to make his audiences fall in love with the Spanish musical style he has studied for so long but by the end of Copla: a Spanish Cabaret (or even during), it is just as likely that you’ll have fallen in love with Postigo (and his grandmother). A hugely engaging and endearing stage presence, accompanied by excellent musicians (Jack Elsdon on piano, Violeta Valladares on violin) and his demonstrable passion for his subject, this is surely one of the most entertaining hours available on a London stage right now, I couldn’t recommend it more.
Described as a “lecture-cabaret-fantasia”, Postigo introduces the world of copla to us, intertwined with his deeply personal narrative. A form of Spanish folk music, popular in the early 20th century, its lyrical cast of outsiders spoke deeply to queer and marginalised communities but with the rise of fascism, the populism of the genre was by co-opted by Franco and Hitler. Postigo attempts to untangle this touchstone of Spanish culture from this legacy, relating it to his own experience as a 21st century queer migrant, uncertain how to feel about ‘home’.

More than that though, he invites us to feel what this music did, and still can do. He introduces the song ‘Tatuaje’, written by Xandro Valerio, Rafael de León and Manuel López Quiroga about the doomed love affair between a sex worker and a foreign sailor, singing it first in Spanish playing both roles, telling the story of the song, singing it again in English, then duetting with a recorded version of himself in an exquisite multimedia blend. It’s such a deeply considered way of guiding us into this musical world, understanding fully its immersive power.
There’s exploration of how music can transcend boundaries – a study of ‘Mon Homme’ follows its translations into ‘Mi Hombre’ and ‘My Man’ in the hands of Saran Montiel, Billie Holiday, Édith Piaf, Barbra, Whitney and more. There’s a witty gameshow of ‘who wants to be a fascist censorship officer’ that looks at how regimes rewrote what they deemed inappropriate (and what they thought was acceptable). A mindblowing moment comes with Postigo talking about his love of Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music. Except it was Teresa Maria’s voice and it was called Sonrisas y Lágrimas (Smiles and Tears) to say the least of what the translated version of Do-Re-Mi actually means, what’s a diva-loving gay boy to do?
It’s a deeply fascinating show, one full of poignancy and power. A recorded interview with Postigo’s grandmother at age 101 is astounding, someone who lived through the rise of a fascist regime speaking of its insidious reach is particularly chilling at this precise moment in time. There’s also something almost unbearably moving about the difficulties revealed here for Spanish LGBTQ+ communities and their acceptance, especially from older loved ones. It’s further fuel for the emotional intensity of Copla songs and as proven here, you can’t see why it shouldn’t be as widely celebrated a genre as fado or chanson.