Look out, Stradbally - the unsettling Lost Vagueness troupe takes over the town as part of Electric Picnic, writes Melanie Morris.
If all you're heard about this summer's music festivals is mud, tents, skinny jeans, Razorlight, big shades, trailers and portaloos, then you haven't heard about Lost Vagueness. If you heard the rumours last July about Kate Moss and Pete Doherty maybe getting married at Glastonbury, well then you have.
Conceived, established, developed and extended at Glastonbury over the past seven years, Lost Vagueness is the brainchild of Roy Gurvitz (a Glastonbury veteran of 25 years) and Deborah Burke. Debs fell across the kernel of Lost Vagueness when she visited Roy's alternative bar, housed in a casino-like environment at the seminal festival. Since then, the two have worked at developing the concept into a fully-fledged cult in its present incarnation of stalls, sideshows and decadence that growing legions of fans have stumbled upon every year since.
Describing the world of Lost Vagueness is a writer's dream. There's so much to take in, you might find yourself talking sound bites into a Dictaphone à la Special Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks. "Dress code - a bit Four Non Blondes meets Hawaii Five-O . . . Guy in Nazi uniform driving a motorised tricycle . . . Emotional Baggage stall with woman getting rid of people's written problems, like a priest praying for intentions . . . Silver service restaurant - vegetarian of course - where diners have to dress up in supplied ball gowns and eveningwear . . . Chapel called the Church of Fear and Loathing, with lingerie-clad gogo dancers witnessing weddings that last for a day . . . " Lost Vagueness even has its own des-res beach hut accommodation where the reception area stands amid Astro Turf, fairy lights and plastic pink flamingos.
A punky, anarchistic, louche burlesque community, Lost Vagueness is its own little world within a festival environment. And in Glastonbury, that included a 1950s-style diner built in an aircraft fuselage where vodka shots are served with homemade lemonade. Across the way, the bars are as likely to be dispensing oxygen as alcohol and there's a rather "alternative" looking barber's shop you wouldn't even recommend to Saddam Hussein.
Some festival-goers tend to wander into the Lost Vagueness fields and never venture further. Supergroups - why bother? Backstage? Nah. This is far more eye-popping. Take, for example, the Lost Vagueness Ballroom, where cabaret, sideshows and offbeat entertainers do their thing to packed houses - and where some of the audience members are even more corseted and be-plumed than the performers.
While we won't be experiencing Lost Vagueness in its full glory at Electric Picnic this year, certain elements of it will be travelling for an initial tasting, which the creators hope to extend in the following years. What is a cert is that the central feature of Lost Vagueness - the ballroom - will be presenting entertainment that's simply indefinable. Think of Archaos - the mad French circus from the late 1980s, where men juggled chainsaws - at one extreme, and the more eye-watering moments of You're a Star at the other, and you're still not even halfway there. It might be a Dixieland band playing heavy metal numbers, or a woman who can hang from hooks. Hell, it could even be the two in tandem - or on a tandem. Stradbally will never have seen the like.
Equally entertaining are the Laundrettas, a sideshow of frantic "ladies" who will dispense valium-tinged fashion and beauty advice to clients - "the sort you'd find in the copies of old Vogue magazines from your granny's house". Their pampering and unique brand of festival rescue comes complete with gin in teacups before The Laundrettas burst into their own brand of live performance.
As a business proposition, Lost Vagueness is a community of like-spirited performers who work together with the help of government funding (Abbey Theatre, take notes). The concept has grown in spread and stature. There are dedicated Lost Vagueness festivals as well as appearances at other festivals - such as at Electric Picnic - and an increasing number of corporate events (Channel 4 and Chrysalis records among the admirers) to keep the wolf from the door.
A final word of encouragement from Debs Burke: "The whole point of Lost Vagueness is getting into the spirit of it. Seeing people rock up to the ballroom in their tuxes and ball gowns would be great. It's a laugh, and it's not a place for wallflowers." And her final words of warning - "Don't accept the Laundrettas' offer of a haircut."
The Electric Picnic takes place today and tomorrow in Stradbally, Co Laois. See www.lostvagueness.com and www.electricpicnic.ie for further information