Music, Mayhem and a Mezzo is Juliette Pochin’s mid-life crisis

Juliette and partner James Morgan, who live in Lindfield, enter new territory with the show from Monday to Wednesday, May 22-24 at Caravanserai Brighton: Junk Poets.

They’ve performed with the world's finest orchestras on the world’s greatest stages, they’ve soundtracked Hollywood and produced multi-platinum-selling records. Now, as they say, Juliette and James are “abusing their prodigious musical talents to explore #MeToo, midlife, music and Prosecco with original comic songs, piano acrobatics all served up with a filthily operatic sense of humour.”

Faced with the double whammy of turning 50 and her daughter leaving home, Juliette jumped out of an aeroplane and wrote a cabaret show. After a premiere at London’s Crazy Coqs, Juliette and James took Music, Mayhem and a Mezzo to the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2022 where they were Pick of the Fringe.

“During lockdown we started doing silly things like this, silly mash-ups on social media and it grew and grew and got sillier and sillier.”

Juliet always does a comedy summing up of the year at the Brighton Festival Chorus Christmas concert and in a way this is an extension of that: “It has been great fun to do. We took it to the Crazy Coqs and now we are doing three nights at the Brighton Fringe.

“It's all about comic songs as part of my midlife crisis! We do lots of mash-ups like Beethoven and ABBA together and we do the history of music in three minutes flat.”

James is happy to play the straight man in this: “I play the piano and Juliet does a lot on her own.”

As Juliet says: “I did pierce my ear but this is cheaper than a sports car and it's lovely to do.”

Juliet and James have worked with everyone from Pete Townshend to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and from Cliff Richard to Robert Plant. Film scores include Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet, My Policeman starring Harry Styles and The Courier starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Juliette has sung with the UK’s leading orchestras, released a solo album of arrangements from Vivaldi, and performed with Sir Simon Rattle and Meatloaf. James has conducted at English National Opera, Glyndebourne and has even wielded his baton on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.