P.M.

*** The six-strong ensemble from England took a near-capacity City Hall audience by storm on Saturday night.

And the a capella crew provoked most un-Bermudian cheers and whistles when they came back on stage for a well-deserved encore performance.

In a masterly display of what can only be called mouth music, the group went on a musical journey encompassing English 16th century madrigals, through the pre-Raphaelite back to nature movement to Beatlemania.

And the superb singing was interspersed with typically languid and self-deprecating English humour -- poking fun at the Anglo-Saxon attitude to..well, rumpy pumpy, really.

The King's Singers may be a trifle arch, but at least it's pure Carrera marble, if not pure gold -- but the combination of arch and gold is still a bit of a sensitive issue in Bermuda, so we won't go there.

The programme started with 16th century songs celebrating nature and the English Garden -- Elizabethan code for "a bit of the other,'' according to the King's Singers.

And the reign of QE I theme continued, with choral dances from Sir Benjamin Britten's opera, Gloriana, written to celebrate the coronation of number two in the Betty line in the 1950s.

All Creatures Now -- part of the English Garden section -- was written to emphasise how the reign of Good Queen Bess was greeted with universal joy, even by the animals of the kingdom.

Well, by all except Mary, Queen of Scots, of course, who as we all know, I'm sure, got her head chopped off.

But -- as an advertisement for a stout produced by my Celtic bretheren across the Irish sea said: "We're not bitter.'' Coming from a culture where folk music largely celebrates heroes -- the subject emerging at the end of horrendous slaughter covered in blood and gore, but otherwise unscathed, ideally -- and where woman generally only get a look in if their lover's dying on some foreign field after being cut to pieces by an overwhelming number of Englishmen, some of the songs seem, well, just a wee bit twee.

The King's Singers, however, and quite appropriately given the time of year, do give a nod in the direction of Robbie Burns, with My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose -- uncharacteristically romantic for Scotland.

But when you combine a nervous disposition with an addiction to whisky, well, you can expect trouble, I suppose.

The Garden of Eden -- a truly stunning performance of what the human voice can do and specially written for the sextet -- was one the highlights of the show.

And the Edwardian Garden selection took Robert Graves, who turned to a mystical worship of nature after being scarred by his experience as a World War I infantry officer, plus a poem by pre-Raphaelite Christina Rosetti and transformed them into something close to pagan hymns.

But the group don't just rely on their singing and the deep-voiced Stephen Connolly, who looks and acts uncannily like British comedian Rowan Atkinson, came close to stealing the show with notes on life which definitely tended towards the sharp.

The King's Singers have been around a long time -- albeit with a varying line-up -- but on the strength of Saturday's performance, they deserve their longevity and a long line of curtain calls to come.

RAYMOND HAINEY THEATRE THR REVIEW REV