Underbelly, Bristo Square – Clover
Aug 13-25
22:00
Kelly McCaughan debuted this show ast year to widespread, award-winning, acclaim, and ended by playing to sell-out audiences. Walking out of this hour of exhilarating, compelling, hilarious, and sensationally performed piece of clowning comedy gold myself, it’s pretty obvious why.
The show details her time spent in a Catholic Girls Boarding School, and it’s effect on her life and sense of identity. It is delivered as part autobiography, part church service, all entertainment. The ‘sermon’ begins with audience participation, the pews bedecked with pleasingly authentic looking ‘orders of service’ doubling as hymn books. From the get-go, McCaughan usurps audience expectations, she flits between ‘naughty catholic school girl’ & tyrannical teacher with speed and incredible ease and from one moment to the next we’re unsure if we’re going to be titillated or castigated.
Not that there is any prolonged titilation as such, Kelly is such an extraordinary performer that she is able to take each of the dance & movement sections of the show and morph them midway through into a live version of the infamous music video for ‘Windowlicker’ by Aphex Twin, and she nails this right down to her ability to morph her facial mania seamlessly into twisted HR Geigher-esque grotesqueness, with gusto. There are ample amounts of flesh on display, revealed and accompanied by impressively silly & creative mid routine costume changes. The men in the audience however are far too intimidated by the almost tactile confidence which shoots from McKeoghan as she twerks, gyrates, and pulls facial contortions normally only witnessed at illegal raves.
Also on impressive display is the widest display of sacrilege I’ve ever experienced in an hour, yes, even more than Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and yet there is almost nothing actually ‘offensive’ in this show. The only potential audience members I could think to give a trigger warning to would be the squeamish, or Hydrophobes.
There is a very definite ‘splatter zone’, which realistically extends to the very back of the room, and Kelly informs us that she’s put on waterproof lipstick, and she knows how to use it. Water is joined, unsurprisingly, by healthy amounts of bread and wine which, one way or another, are ‘distributed’ to the crowd. There’s also some very cunning use of chocolate which serves to punctuate, in a hilarious and nauseating manner, the best pun I’ve ever heard about the ‘misuse’ of a crucifix.
All of this balances out the ‘heavier’ themes in the show, and this allows for an experience which is entertaining, moving, hilarious, and thought provoking in measures perfectly weighted. The sheer bravado of the performance ensures that no-one leaves the room without a smile on their face, a chatter on their lips, and the feeling that actually, 12 quid to see this is an astonishing bargain. Given all of this, I suspect that to get an opportunity to experience what is one of the finest shows I have seen at The Fringe, or indeed anywhere, will require hasty action on your part. ‘Book now to avoid dissappointment’.
Ewan Law
themumble.uk 