The West Side Story star put in one of the all-time great berserk musical performances with bespoke song celebrating, by name, many of this year’s female nominees
If you didn’t watch the Baftas last night, it means you missed one of the all-time great berserk musical performances ever seen: Angela Bassett Did the Thing.
That wasn’t its official name, by the way. Nobody knows what the official name was. Technically it was a musical performance by Ariana DeBose, but it was a performance so gormless, so busy, so deeply and unsettlingly confusing, that to give it a name would only serve to minimise it. Angela Bassett Did the Thing came as the middle part of DeBose’s medley celebrating women. The first part was a full-bore rendition of Sisters are Doin’ It For Themselves; in itself an orgy of spinning and twirling and flung chairs, performed by DuBose in the manner of someone desperately trying to spook a horse. The last part was a snatch of We Are Family, presumably because someone decided that the Baftas weren’t enough like a provincial wedding reception.
