Wainwright/McGarrigle Family Christmas Show at the Royal Albert Hall, SW7

Kate and Anna McGarrigle, the folk singers, were joined onstage by talented relatives including Rufus and Martha Wainwright

When most families invite their relatives round for a festive knees-up they bring out the karaoke machine. When Kate and Anna McGarrigle, the acclaimed Canadian folkies and respective mother and aunt of Rufus and Martha Wainwright (pictured), host a seasonal bash they can sell out every seat at the Albert Hall — last year it was a similar scenario at Carnegie Hall in New York.

It helps, of course, when your family includes around a dozen talented singers and musicians and lots of your friends are famous. The Wainwright/McGarrigle Family Christmas Show, subtitled A Not So Silent Night, boasted not just a band but an orchestra, countless cousins who performed everything from traditional French folk to rock’n’roll, a carol-singing clan clad as Dickensian characters and guests who ranged from French and Saunders performing a gay-themed skit, the Elbow singer Guy Garvey in a flat cap and waistcoat, to Boy George inciting a mass clap-along.

“I’m either the Artful Dodger or, er, a little toy,” joked the host, Rufus Wainwright, of his outfit of checked trousers, matching tinsel-trimmed necktie and patent leather winklepickers, before introducing the soprano Janis Kelly, star of his opera Prima Donna, dressed as a sexy Santa. The pair’s duet on one of Wainwright’s own compositions, Christmas is for Kids, sounded stunning but, like many of the songs in the three-hour show, verged on the morose.

A faithful cover of Chuck Berry’s Run Rudolph Run, performed by the Thompson family, briefly picked up the pace, before the classily attired McGarrigle sisters played banjo and accordion on what a frail-looking Kate called a “riverboat treatment” of Cherry Tree Carol.

The loudest cheer of the evening was reserved for Garvey, who performed a stunning piano-backed ballad he described as “utterly depressing”, before returning in the show’s second half to order the audience to their feet for an only tentatively more cheerful Happy Xmas (War is Over). While there was no questioning the quality of the content, the relentlessly downbeat tempo was disappointing. At times, the concert felt more like a wake than a celebration.

Thank heavens, then, for Boy George, who arrived in a glitter-strewn suit with too-short trousers to cover White Christmas, and Martha Wainwight and Ed Harcourt’s fabulous Fairytale of New York. As the pair clung on to each other and spun in circles and the McGarrigle sisters argued over whether angels have sex, fans really did feel as though they were part of the coolest family in folk.

Lisa Verrico, The Times 11-12-2009

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