Cabaret, comedy and poetry, from Mitzi Maybe in collaboration with poet and musician Lily Neal The Good Time Girls is a regular collaboration between Mitzi and Lily Neal, whose performing persona is called Sally Scrumptious. This double act comprises cabaret by Mitzi complemented by Lily's poetry. Like Mitzi's songs, Lily's work has a broad range, from poignant to comic, always with an imaginative depth and entertaining slant on life. The act also features some musical duets, with Lily as violinist and singer. They can be contacted either via: mitzi@mitzimaybe.co.uk (01626 866133) or lily@segalbooks.com (01392 877895)
Media samples Duets and Lily's poems: for Mitzi solos, see the main Media page. Countess Wear concert, February 2007. Videos by Ken Barrett of Topsham. Piano accompanist Jane Sugden. WMV format, 5Mb. "I Want to Sing in Opera" "If They Could See Us Now"       "Sir Robert" "The Confession" "Men of my Dreams" "Levitation"   About us Mitzi is the stage name of Nicola Howard, teacher, performer and soon-to-be legend. She lives in Dawlish and has on occasion been dubbed "The Dawlish Canary" for her sweet singing voice. (Other names have also been bestowed upon her, but these are less seemly). Lily also used to be a teacher, but gave up on her teenage pupils when she found how much fun adult students were and how much more responsive the senior person could be to her poetry appreciation and creative writing classes. She has published virtually nothing, but does now run her own secondhand bookshop (in partnership with Joel Segal of Topsham) where she gets to rub shoulders with the local literati and see how it's done. Reviews Mitzi Maybe Goes Global Mitzi Maybe "The Dawlish Canary" gave a sparkling performance of cabaret songs on Tuesday evening (7th November) at Exeter Central Library as part of the Exeter Autumn Festival. Besides having an agile and focused voice, she gets inside the character of each song and sings with an emotional directness, which engages her audience. She is really a singing actress with a nice sense of irony apparent in her witty introductions and links between songs. She became a vamp or hapless starlet with equal facility. The songs by Kurt Weill were especially good and the setting of John Betjeman's Song of a Nightclub Proprietress was very funny. Pianist Imogene Newland played sympathetically for all the songs. The show alternated sets of songs with original verse read by Lily Neal in the role of a glamorous Jean Brodyish blue stocking. She has the diction of an arch Radio Four presenter and reads with a nuance that veers between the hilarious and the poignant. My personal favourite, called Ignorance, cleverly explores sympathetic resonance in musical instruments before unexpectedly jumping to the effect a roadworker has on the poet with his thumping vibrations. The show would perhaps benefit from a venue like a small theatre or a nightclub to be most effective but the performance was cleverly conceived and much enjoyed. Reviewer: David Cottam, Sandford The Good Time Girls The Café, Topsham, 10th April 2007 Singer Mitzi Maybe and poet Sally Scrumptious are the girls in question in this splendid show, and the good time on offer comprises a witty and well-paced sequence of song, parody and poetry. A lively I Could Have Danced All Night from Mitzi started us off, followed by a well-observed and poignant poem, The Bride, from Sally. Among the other offerings we had a poetic diatribe against all kinds of artificial flowers in which deviously clever rhymes come thick and fast; new words to Food, Glorious Food now retitled Me, Glorious Me and sung with total conviction by Mitzi; and a very funny version of the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen (sung straight by Mitzi but with her partner providing subtitles which combined a dodgy translation with an ironic commentary). Both performers established an excellent rapport with the audience, but in very different ways. Mitzi Maybe (aka Nicola Howard) is exuberant and flirtatious, with a confident stage presence and a terrific voice encompassing a wide emotional range - from the girlish naïvety of I Could Have Danced All Night to her later depiction of a jaded, hung-over older woman in John Betjeman's Song of a Nightclub Proprietress; and I particularly liked her performance of I'm a Stranger Here Myself with its subtle emotional colouring. She has the ability not only to convey emotion but also to evoke it in us, the audience - a far harder task, but the fact that she succeeds apparently effortlessly illustrates the old adage that the art lies in concealing the art. Sally Scrumptious (aka Lily Neal) presents a more sober and down-to-earth persona, until she draws us into one of her amazing flights of imagination with an enviable verbal dexterity (for example, when she fashioned a rhyme for 'petunia' which fully justified her possessing a poetic licence!). Unlike many poets, she is good at performing her own work, but her billing as a comic poet does not do her work justice. Certainly the comic is her forte, but there is an emotional depth to a number of her poems which well complemented the wit of her light-hearted material. These two work well both as individual performers and as a duo. Compared to previous performances they have trimmed the badinage between items to good effect and sharpened up the transitions between items; and they are well-served by pianist Lizzie Mintball (aka Jane Sugden) whose playing was often - and I mean this as a compliment - not noticeable, in the sense of being unintrusive. Her ability, however, and the fact that Lily Neal played the violin (both in harmony with Mitzi in a couple of numbers, and solo in one short burst of Irish jigs) raises the possibility of their including the occasional instrumental-only item in future performances. I hope they consider it. The Good Time Girls is an excellent evening out. Catch them when you can: you won't regret it. Richard Skinner (Richard Skinner is an Exeter-based poet. He regularly gives readings of his work at the Bishop's Palace as part of the Exeter Autumn Festival)