All About Evil – An Evening with Peaches Christ

This weekend saw the inaugural Manchester Weekender pull together over 30 cultural organisations in the city to deliver a focused weekend of art, music and performance.

However, here at Curated place HQ we were far too busy learning how to look after a tiny new human to fully indulge (hence the slightly slowed pace of the blog of late) although we did manage to get down to Cornerhouse to enjoy the long awaited arrival of Joshua Grannell bedecked in his finery as alter ego Peaches Christ.

Thanks to the Abandon Normal Devices festival Peaches headed to Manchester to Premiere Granell’s debut feature film “All About Evil” as the headliner event of an evening that delivered far more than a mere film screening. Protests outside the cinema were met with bemused looks from early doors drinkers heading home via Oxford Road station, while the fabulous costumes on display from both the participating audience and the ‘outraged’ librarians picketing the queue, prompted the unplanned arrival of one of GMP’s dog units.

Audience members were played into Cornerhouse’s Screen 1 by a theramin/singing saw duo of daemons with Peaches herself finally being introduced by the event’s producer Bren O’Callaghan to MC, host a song and dance number, judge a costume contest and declare free bookish lapdances for all, seeing the librarians succumb to the allure of the occasion by stripping to their smalls and getting busy to Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away” and Khia’s “My Neck My Back” (needless to say parental guidance is advised).

All before the film even began.

Conjuring an alternate reality where characters spill from the screen into the auditorium, mystery punch tickles the tastebuds of the unsuspecting, and the audience is well and truly placed within the action, Peaches Christ injects an excitement and anticipation right into the heart of the experience of going to the movies that is fundamentally lost in the soulless multiplexes that pass for big-screen entertainment.

If you missed it pray that Peaches was genuine in her announcement that she’d love to return to Manchester to host a series of her infamous  Midnight Mass events because an evening in the presence of this most outrageous creature has to be experienced to be believed.

And as for the film? A master-class in trash.