Edinburgh Fringe 2019: Lucy McCormick review — Post Popular has possibly the best pay-off of the Fringe

In your face: lucy Mccormick’s edinburgh show is based on vignettes about eve, boudicca and Florence nightingale
Kaleido Shoots
Veronica Lee14 August 2019

Lucy McCormick doesn’t hold back — and, true to form, within minutes of Post Popular starting she’s simulating rimming one of her male backing dancers.

The men (Samir Kennedy and Rhys Hollis) spend most of the hour in their pants but we shouldn’t worry about them being objectified — after all, McCormick tells us, she’s trying to rebalance the gender debate by doing a show about the great women of history who inspired her.

Despite that suggesting some humility on her part, McCormick’s stage persona remains comically self-aggrandising and narcissistic.

Post Popular is the follow-up to McCormick’s 2016 hit Triple Threat (again directed by Ursula Martínez), which was an X-rated version of the Nativity story, and there are echoes of that work, in the show’s unpredictability and its mishmash of theatre, music, dance and caustic comedy.

She performs a series of vignettes about Eve, Boudicca and Florence Nightingale. Then McCormick takes a break and has a snack on stage because, well, she has run out of celebrated women from history. Then she has an idea; should she include the Suffragettes? How about we vote on it? In a show that screams its comedy at you this is a wonderfully subtle joke.

As ever with such a talented performer, it’s confrontational and shocking — but mostly fun — and has a run at Soho Theatre in December.

Post Popular, improbably, has a feelgood ending about finding the heroes within us all. But of course there’s a twist — and possibly the best pay-off of the Fringe.

Until Aug 25 (tickets.edfringe.com)

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