Lucy McCormick has no friends. Or so she’d have you think. In a change to the style of her previous Fringe appearances, she is on her own, performing solo as it were. But why should that bring any change to her usual manic madcap queer clownish burlesque?
If you haven’t ever seen McCormick’s work before, it’s often difficult to quantify. It certainly qualifies as alternative comedy, leaning heavily into the sex-orientated side of queer cabaret, with a dash of drag and peppered with singing. Which means that you should expect nudity, sex jokes, dance and costumes galore. But equally, anticipate that at some point, something will go into or come out of an orifice that you didn’t expect, and will lead to some belaboured gag.
It’s certainly a funny show, as she has a great degree of talent onstage, and is actually quite a good actress and certainly has the lungs and lips of a great singer. The problem here is that, much like with her previous act Post Popular, there are still issues that jokes go on too long and there is a wealth of time where she vanishes offstage to change. True, this is worked into the show, with the audience singing along, but that itself becomes tedious, and not in a way that lends itself to being absurdly funny.
Perhaps the lesson here is that while Lucy clearly has the chops to run a Fringe show by herself, she’s better with her friends.