In another good year for Edinburgh Fringe shows billed as comedy that could easily have been put down as theatre, here’s a theatre show that could easily have been comedy.
The start of her second solo hour – following last year’s Main Character Energy – is in fact indistinguishable from stand-up, as the sunny, charismatic Wilkey talks us through a classic solo-show conundrum. She’s single! And she doesn’t know why! Which is particularly galling because she’s bisexual and – by her own account – pretty unfussy.
And she’s very amusing about it all, batting out a selection of a cappella R&B classics as she talks through a romantic history that can kind of be summed up as ‘Jesus then men then women’. She’s particularly funny on why feckless lesbians are just as annoying to date as feckless straight guys.
The theatre, then, comes from the conceit that Wilkey herself is incapable of being honest with herself and about her wants, needs and history and so to get the real goss we need to visit her ‘infinite pussy’, a sort of more liberated version of herself dressed in gauzy red robe who we transition to via loud sucking sound. This all builds to a climax that brings in her morose, wounded heart as a charactrer too (also played by the artist).
This stuff does all get a bit woo-woo: on the one hand there’s a slightly terrifying outpouring of self-love etc, on the other the whole thing with Wilkey playing herself, her vag and her heart does feel a bit ‘classic 1970s performance art’.
The show also never answers its own question: why is Wilkey single? I mean I suspect the answer maybe amounts to ‘why are any of us single?’ and the show’s premise is essentially meant rhetorically.
But – and I can’t really believe I wrote this sentence either – she raises the subject of her ‘infinite pussy’ and the fact she’s very easy to turn on and how it’s made it harder for her to have meaningful relationships (because she feels just as turned on by everyone). But she never really returns to this when it actually sounds quite interesting and weird and also a big problem. Although maybe she was talking about her infinite pussy more figuratively, I don’t know.
An affable show and there’s no crime in either theatrical stand-up or funny one-woman theatre shows, but I couldn’t help but feel there are stronger versions of Lover Girl that commit wholeheartedly to being either chatty comedy or something more committedly theatrical.
