The many faces of The Tiger Lillies

Freakshow

"Welcome to the Carnival of Circus Freaks
The Bleeding Lady the blood from her leaks
Here is a place where you can buy crack
Lobotomised whores who you can slap."

The Freakshow presents the mutation of the Tiger Lillies 1999 cd 'Circus Songs'. New outcasts have their story presented for your listening pleasure.

The Snake Woman, Three Legged Jake, Rosa with 3 Hearts, the Fat Lady, Deathless Man, Normo, Bleeding Lady, Matchstick Man, Flipper Boy, The Bleeding Lady, Ugly Joe, Hairy Man and the Sleeper all cavort for your entertainment. A carnival of oddities, but who is the freak, them or YOU?

7 Deadly Sins

Punk cabaret favourites The Tiger Lillies present a brand new theatre cabaret charting man’s fall from paradise to hell. With Punch and Judy puppetry, the show puts a post-modern twist on the tale of Adam and Eve, as same-sex couple Punch and Jude represent the original sinners in the age of civil partnership. With an original new song for each deadly sin, the show bursts with The Tiger Lillies’ dark and deviant style. The three-piece band is joined by burlesque performer Ophelia Bitz and puppetry from performer Nathan Evans.

Mountains of Madness

Alexander Hacke (bassist of Einstürzende Neubauten), illustrator Danielle de Picciotto and The Tiger Lillies present the twisted stories of H P Lovecraft in a show that combines songs, narration, illustration and electronic soundscapes. The Cthulhu Mythos of elder gods waiting to conquer the world of men comes alive and all will tremble. Also available on DVD.
Online gallery of photos from the show

The Little Match Girl

In honor of the bicentennial of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, the Tiger Lillies are lighting up "The Little Match Girl" with their special blend of world music, jazz, eerie falsetto and subtle raven-black sardonic wit. While never quite as racy, raucous or blasphemous as some of the trio's previous stage works ("Shockheaded Peter" being the most widely seen), the overall tone is of a mesmerizing, mystical chimera -- equal parts Kurt Weill (and Bertolt Brecht), Astor Piazzolla, Angelo Badalamenti, Tom Waits, Sgt. Pepper and flea circus.

Die Weberischen

"For as long as people can remember, Vienna has not produced a better, more pleasurable chamber musical" was the praise from Die Welt. This satirical story, full of dark humour, is of Mozart's wife Constanze Weber, her mother and three sisters, and was one of the most sensational productions of the Viennese Mozart Year in 2006. The musical genius himself is only allowed onto the stage as a puppet, and is shoved around and humiliated by the Weber ladies. His compositions, likewise, only figure as excerpts, and are contrasted with the weird music of the "Tiger Lillies". Five strong women meet musically with the Tiger Lillies and the 25 piece orchestra of the VEREINIGTE BÜHNEN WIEN.

Punch and Judy

Punch, the archetypal English clown figure, is unscrupulous, anarchistic and malevolent in all that he does, wittily and jovially murdering anyone who gets in his way – whether it be his own wife, the policeman, the doctor, the hangman or even the devil.

Played once upon a time in the streets of Old England as a macabre and “undivine” comedy, the story is retold here in the form of a dark operetta: Punch’s triumphant marriage to Judy, the birth of his child, his beautiful murders and his own magnificent death. It seems as if Punch has been waiting all this time for the Tiger Lillies to come along in order to perform his perfidy to perfection.

Tiger Lillies Circus

A big top show of sad clowns, diseased jugglers, fiendish gigolos' and many other scabrous circus folk. On tour in Europe now. Featuring songs from the cd CIRCUS SONGS.

Online gallery of photos from the show by Richard Haughton HERE

The Gorey End

In October 1999, a large grey box was dispatched unsolicited from Cape Cod to London . Its contents included a range of unpublished, undated manuscripts, written in both prose and poetry, with an address label etched in the unmistakable hand of Edward Gorey, whose work was in the tradition of Heinrich Hoffmann, Edgar Alan Poe and Edward Lear. These manuscripts inspired a new cycle of songs by Martyn Jacques for the Tiger Lillies.

Sadly, Edward Gorey died during Easter 2000, before he had the chance to listen to the new material. In his memory, The Tiger Lillies recorded the songs that summer for EMI, and are joined on the recording by the Kronos Quartet on all but 4 of the tracks.

Shockheaded Peter
Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann, a Frankfurt 'medical man of the lunatic asylum', wrote and illustrated The Struwwelpeter (ShockHeaded Peter) more than 150 years ago because he couldn't find anything on the shelves to fire the imagination of his children.

SHOCKHEADED PETER is the collective nightmare of the visionary direction and design team of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (co-founders of London's Improbable Theatre) and the underworld's favorite cabaret act, The Tiger Lillies, led by the bizarre and beautiful falsetto of Martyn Jacques. Set in a distorted Victorian toy theater, SHOCKHEADED PETER evokes a lost world of theatrical illusion-a music box spinning out of control; an advent calendar with a different lunatic waiting behind every door.

CIRCA - The Holy Body Tattoo

A celebration of the sensual forces of submission and control. Circa is imbued with the dark beauty of decay and the (unspoken) language of desire. Saturated with smokey tango and caberet debauchery. Performed by choreographers Noem Gagnon and Dana Gingras and The Tiger Lillies.