Edinburgh Fringe 2023: “Lucy and Friends,” Pleasance Courtyard

Lucy McCormick used to do music gigs and re-enactments, but she has now put her past and her friends behind her and is bent on exploring being in the present. This of course must include us.

While her previous pieces used pre-existing narrative structures – the nativity play, the history book, or the pop concert –as a way of organising her neoburleque comedy and cabaret material, this time she simply banters her way through. And it works.

She did not get the Arts Council funding, she tells us, so she is doing this alone and needs our help – and what better way to get the audience on your side than to immerse them in a bit of role play too!? So, dressed as a tree, she canvasses the auditorium for some stage hand help as we take our seats – someone to throw confetti, someone else to shine a light when the moment comes. We collectively play a choir and/or her MC when needed, and she also picks a few of us to be her mum, her agent and a critic. Most of the time we just laugh though – sometimes uncontrollably, sometimes uncomfortably, but always without any coaxing. She quips, she belts out songs, she wields a welder, she dances seductively, she even, as is her custom, engages supermarket goods and her own genitals in theatre play. Little by little she pushes the boundaries as more and more spillage and mess piles on her face, her body, and on the stage around her. At one point, hanging off the top of the set, her heart drenched in wine, her stilettos stuck in the lighting rig, she hollers for help.

There is real drama in this show, oh yes, and not only when Lucy gets hypnotised to play a cat, or even when she attempts live urination in order to complete a challenge. Ultimately this is a show about self-sufficiency and loneliness and what we mean to each other, without it being stated as such. That Lucy is a master scriptwriter while also being a quadruple threat as a performer, we get a chance to witness when multiple strands she seeds at the start of her show come together again in a firy tirade at the end aimed at the mum/agent/critic/audience mainstream that ‘wants to capitalise on the queer experiences but can’t be bothered to come and engage’. There is even a far better and more coherent review of Lucy McCormick’s work quoted within her show, all I am here to tell you is go and see for yourself. You might actually make a ‘friend’ by the end, or at least join a WhatsApp group in Lucy’s phone.