All About Manchester

More than meets the eye

As she prepares to storm into Manchester to headline this year's queerupnorth, the inimitable Sandra Bernhard proves Evie Lucas wrong in judging a book by its cover.

I am not one to indulge in self-pity (very often) but picture this, if you will. It is 8pm on a Tuesday and everyone else left the office hours ago to try to make it home before the worst storm of the year hits Manchester. It has been the mother of long days but there is one more thing to do before packing up - a telephone interview with Sandra Bernhard.

If you've just arrived from another planet, here's a little background information on the aforementioned fierce creature:

Born in Michigan in 1955, Bernhard has been scandalising America for three decades with her brand of sexually charged, acerbically funny and scathingly critical shows.

Her big career break came in 1983 when she played alongside Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis in the film The King of Comedy, directed by Martin Scorsese. She continued to appear in a variety of TV and film roles throughout the 80s, but it was her stand-up routine - an inspired mixture of outrageous rants, lethal satire and sizzling rock'n'roll - that kept her in the spotlight.

In 1988 she shook New York with her off-Broadway one-woman show Without You I'm Nothing, which was later turned into a critically-acclaimed film and album.

And who can forget Bernhard's turbulent friendship with Madonna in the late 80s? The two women frequently appeared together in public, teasing the media with the possibility of a romantic relationship.

The 90s saw Bernhard appear frequently in the hit sitcom Roseanne as the dizzy lesbian waitress Nancy, alongside various other film and TV roles. Although a couple of forays into mainstream films were undistinguished, her stand-up shows continued to be popular, culminating with Bernhard's 1998 Broadway show I'm Still Here…Damn It!

After the birth of her daughter Cicely in 1998 Bernhard seemed to slow down a bit. But she was back in full force in 2006 with her off-Broadway show Everything Bad & Beautiful, which brought her to England on tour last year.

You would think that time, motherhood and a long-time romantic relationship with Vanity Fair publicist Sara Switzer would have mellowed her. Yet she has continued to speak her mind, loud and clear, and cause controversy.

Which brings us to this Tuesday evening and a weary journalist dialling Bernhard's telephone number in New York, with gale-force winds raging outside and her imagination running wild inside.

"Hello?"

Bernhard's voice is warm and friendly. She doesn't sneer when I ask her permission to tape the interview and doesn't bite my head off for taking my time coercing my tape recorder into action.

I recover from the shock sufficiently to stumble into my first question. How did her involvement with queerupnorth come about?

"It was all booked through my manager so I don't know the genesis, but it's just something that seems right on all counts. I think it's a very eclectic artistic festival, with a lot of interesting performers. And I'm delighted to be a part of it."

But, after a brief moment of hesitation, "It involves various different elements of the arts, right?" she asks with some urgency.

"Yes, it's a very prestigious festival," I assure her.

She is right to be cautious about her touring shows. Last year, someone thought it was a good idea for her to kick off her UK tour in Huddersfield Town Hall. And, even more disturbingly, they found it unnecessary to include any Manchester dates.

"I didn't purposely skip Manchester," she protests. "The promoter who brought me over booked me into some very weird markets that I would normally not have got into and I don't know why he did it. But sometimes you have to roll with the punches.

"I can't remember if I was in Manchester years ago or not. This might be my first time and if it is, I am delighted to finally be arriving."

I suspect that she knows as much about Manchester as most people here know about her hometown of Flint, Michigan.

"Is Manchester not industrial?" she asks.

"It was," I reply. "A long time ago."

"Were some of The Beatles from Manchester?"

Close enough, but she is not satisfied. "I don't know a lot about it," she concedes. "I just know that it's a little edgier than London."

She'll have plenty of time to discover the city, she adds, as she'll be spending a few days here during queerupnorth next month.

Although openly bisexual, Bernhard never went out of her way to establish herself as a 'queer' artist. Was that a conscious decision?

"I've never really tried to serve any one master. I think I'm a performer who crosses all lines of gender, age and religion. My main goal is to reach as many people as possible with a unifying point of view - bringing people out of their dark corners into the light of fun and sexuality and self-expression.

"So maybe it was conscious, maybe it wasn't, but I never wanted to alienate anybody."

Bernhard is very difficult to categorise as an artist. She is much more than a comedienne, a singer or a burlesque artist. She describes her style as "very stream of consciousness, influenced in a certain way by a lot of different elements of performance, from rock 'n' roll to cabaret to jazz to burlesque."

"So many people have influenced me over the years and I think I've taken the best out of all those people and moulded it together into a post-modern style that is uniquely my own," she explains.

For queerupnorth she has reworked her 1988 hit Without You I'm Nothing, keeping the most popular bits of the original show and interspersing them with topical references and pieces from some of her other shows. More than that she won't divulge, but those who buy tickets expecting the sexuality and sting of the original show will not be disappointed.

"I don't think I've toned down at all. I've evolved as an artist and I think I'm a much better performer than I was 20 years ago. As any great performer will tell you, the more you do it the better you get. You shed skin and you go to your core and you can fall back on your years of experience."

As with any cutting-edge artist, Bernhard tends to elicit very strong responses from people. You either hate her or love her but once you've had a taste of her brand of bruising honesty you cannot remain indifferent. And then there is her large cult following that worships her.

"I think people relate to my openness, my comfortability in my own skin," she argues. "My message is spend a little less time judging everybody around you and a little more time finding out what makes you tick and finding your own happiness. As soon as you find that core happiness then you can let everybody else find theirs.

"The problem with the world right now is that it seems to generate so much anger and resentment and hatred and ultimately war. And there are people who are maybe a little bit lost and looking for an alternative way of thinking and being, and I'm somebody who supports and encourages that."

I listen carefully for any signs of sarcasm in her voice. Surely the queen of the bitchy remark has not swapped cynicism, confrontation and rage for love, peace and happiness? This is a woman who thinks nothing of spitting on Laura Bush for not standing for anything and Simon Cowell for standing for everything that's wrong with pop culture. But she insists that there is a point to her ridiculing and that she won't do it just for the shock value of it.

"Just making fun of people doesn't accomplish anything. It has to have a multi-layered point of view. I don't like cheap shots.

"You talk about Laura Bush, you talk about a woman who is obviously educated, who's done things in her life outside of these eight years, and for her to sit there and never say anything, that's opened territory for me to go in and say 'it's your obligation to make a change in the world, otherwise you stink'."

Photo credit: Jason Odell

Bernhard is clearly a political gal, and with the state of politics in her country at the moment, it is not difficult to imagine what keeps her up at night.

"The manipulation of the media and the political scene, where it always ends up being the lowest common denominator of people just tearing each-other apart instead of focusing on the real issues. Those are the things that bother me. And people's general mean-spiritness.

"I think the Bush administration has gotten away with terrible things - corruption, torture, destroying the infrastructure of not only other countries but also our own. The list goes on and on.

"It saddens me but it's a call to arms on an emotional, spiritual level that makes me get up every day and wanna do the best work I can do to counteract it."

Bernhard is convinced her country needs a leader who will wipe the slate clean, and says Barack Obama has her vote.

"I think he represents the new generation. And even if he is not as experienced as the other politicians, I think sometimes you gotta just open yourself up to new ways of thinking and the experience comes. There's nothing that he won't surround himself with the right people to be able to handle."

Having patiently answered all my questions, she says she is glad to have done this interview, which prompts me to confess that I am glad she did not turn out to be as scary as I had expected.

She chuckles and then her voice returns, as warm and comforting as fresh apple pie. "It's one thing to be a performer and get on stage and do your thing and have that persona, but when you're talking to people you have to be open and kind because what's the point of making someone feel uncomfortable, it's not cool."

The fact that in real life Sandra Bernhard is not a cynical, angry and abrasive person but quite the opposite may well be the most shocking thing about her. But don't quote me on that because I have not seen her live on stage yet.

Sandra Bernhard kicks off this year's queerupnorth on Friday, May 9, with the only UK performance of Without You I'm Nothing at Manchester Opera House, with support from Tina C. Tickets cost £10 - £28.50 and you can book by calling 0844 847 2328. For more information on queerupnorth visit www.queerupnorth.com.

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More than meets the eye

As she prepares to storm into Manchester to headline this year's queerupnorth, the inimitable Sandra Bernhard proves Evie Lucas wrong in judging a book by its cover.