UK Theatre Network

For the past couple of months Janie Dee has been treading the boards as the Countess Roussillion in All’s Well that Ends Well at Shakespeare’s Globe.

She’s still there until well into next month, but being the multi-talented woman she is she is also managing to fit in a week’s cabaret at the Pizza Express’s latest live venue, The Pheasantry.

Think Janie Dee and multi-award-winning performances come to mind. She turns her hand to anything, having worked with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performing everything, from Chekov to Alan Ayckbourn, and Harold Pinter to Noel Coward – and The Calendar Girls.

But she is also an accomplished singer, dancer and comedienne, with several West End musicals and performances with Opera North under her belt, plus her own cabaret show.

Janie sparkles when she’s on stage. She appears to be completely at home, relaxed, happy, and having fun. And it’s catching. She knows just how to draw in her audience and make them feel part of her show, and the intimate space that is The Pheasantry is an ideal venue for this.

Some may say it’s too intimate. It’s an awkward space to work, but Janie makes the most of every square metre, using the curved stairway as a point from which to launch into song and even tap dancing down the stairs.

Her range is incredible, and I don’t just mean that her voice can soar from operatic soprano to deep and sultry. Her repertoire is just as diverse. Her programme ranges from comedy numbers to The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, songs from the musicals to an unaccompanied Amazing Grace, and a duet on the piano with composer, lyricist and broadcaster Alexander S Bermange before accompanying herself in a moving rendition of Imagine and then launching into a tale about the West End gala she once organised for peace.

Janie is at The Pheasantry (which has taken over from Pizza on the Park as a live music venue, was once home to Eric Clapton and housed a ballet school where Dame Margot Fonteyn trained) until Sunday, July 10, but if you like the sound of all this you don’t need to go there to experience it – as part of the Windsor Festival, on September 29 she will be in cabaret with Kit Hesketh Harvey at the Theatre Royal Windsor.

www.windsorfestival.com

www.pizzaexpresslive.com