I went to see Something Wicked This Way Comes last night at the Archangel – I’d not been there before and the Archangel turned out to be a rather nice venue at 11-13 Kensington High Street.

The publicity promises an evening of cheeky burlesque and naughty cabaret. There are three performences, held on 22nd October, 19th November and 10th December, and as I enjoy cabaret (I loved the Skin Two Fetish Cabaret evenings brilliantly fronted by Ivor Dembina) I decided to pay it a visit.

The show started some half hour late, with no explanation or apology – but perhaps they were following Oscar Wilde’s advice? Anyway when it finally started it was high energy and good fun but I didn’t get to see all of it because I was forced to leave at the interval.

This wasn’t because I had run out of time and wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it, it was because they had turned up the volume on the sound system so high that it turned a fun occasion into torture.

If you have the best (i.e. expensive) microphones, amplifiers and speakers, then yes, you can turn up the volume.

But if you’re using whatever speakers the venue provides then, even if you’ve bought the best mics, you are still not going to get the sort of sound quality that allows you to turn things way up, So what we heard was so horribly distorted it was painful to hear. I suspect that the singers had good voices, but sadly, at that volume and on that equipment, I’ll never know.

My other gripe is that, although you expect really loud sound levels when you see a band or go to a club, you don’t anticipate this when going to the theatre.

I’d recommend paying it a visit – but only if they promise to keep the sound down at a level where it doesn’t distort.

However I am also starting to wonder whether it is ok for clubs, shows and performances etc to put out sound levels that will result in permanent auditory damage? Or should they print print a warning on their publicity of the decibel levels they intend to use?

What do people think?

Rebecca Winter