EDINBURGH 2019: Review: LUCY MCCORMICK: POST POPULAR, Pleasance Courtyard
Ohhhhh this show is abhorrent. It's expertly deployed obscenity with a smattering of absolute indecency.
It's excellent.
Lucy McCormick is back with Post Popular, once again inflicting her twisted brilliance on Edinburgh, following her last hit Triple Threat in 2016.
I don't think I'm spoiling too much in saying that within the first couple of minutes, McCormick is licking the backside of one of her two very, very tolerant accomplices (Ted Rogers and Samir Kennedy). And I've toned that description down a bit. This is BroadwayWorld, we keep it PG.
The show is, sort of, about re-enacting the greatest hits of the stories of important women throughout history.
All four of them.
It starts with the story of Adam and Eve, involving an audacious dance routine and the destruction of many apples.
If it was God's best go at depicting something unbelievably immoral, with the whole eating-of-the-apple-debacle, then heaven knows where McCormick takes the tale's moral compass. I think she breaks it. And then does something repugnant with it involving Ted or Samir.
If you look past the heinous aspect of the show which is, clearly, its magnum opus (depending on your viewpoint), it is just manically funny. At points you have no idea why you're laughing at a woman screaming "WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?" over and over and over and over as she crawls over the auditorium seats. But McCormick knows why.
There's a section where you're in hysterics over things you really shouldn't be laughing at, which I will not spoil. You realise that McCormick is a sick puppeteer of your feelings for 60 minutes, and there's nothing you can do but submit to it.
She breaks up her show with power ballads, and she has probably one of the best voices on the planet. She also dances like a licentious pop star, bringing back the charm of the Noughties video with all of the filth of an Amsterdam strip show, flanked by Ted and Samir who look sort of like their enjoying themselves, but also like any moment they might be slaughtered by their merciless master.
(Side note: I would pay a LOT of money to see their Equity contracts. They probably read more like a BDSM agreement than legal documentation.)
CLEARLY, Post Popular is not for everyone. It pushes the audience to its limit. There will be walkouts. But, if you can hack it, you will be fixated, mesmerised and stupefied.
Lucy McCormick: Post Popular is at Pleasance Courtyard until 25 August
Photo by Holly Revell
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