Lucy and Friends ★★★★★

Having gained a reputation for shows that are bold, grotesque and unconstrained, Lucy McCormick’s latest solo cabaret explores friendship and loneliness via her punk-art lens. If Sylvia Plath, Leigh Bowery and Tracey Emin ended up in a blender together, it’s conceivable that Lucy and Friends is what would come out.

Her Art Council funding has been cut, she tells us. Forced to dump her co-performers, she is now solo and needs a hand to help her deliver her extraordinary brand of physical comedy. So, amongst liberal lashing of confetti, hummus and tomato puree, she ‘makes friends’ with her audience. A stripper’s pole is not used as expected. Power tools, gaffer tape and group sing songs are also involved.

If this sounds a mess, it literally is, with the audience being invited on stage at one point to clear up the considerable debris generated throughout the performance. But it’s also thoughtful and clearly meticulously conceived. Pathos frequently punctures the madcap and the ridiculous. At times, it’s difficult to know if laughter is an appropriate response to what’s unfolding – it’s not just McCormick’s physical form that is stripped bare, here. She emerges as a creatively and physically uninhibited performer, rarely standing still and shape shifting throughout.

That Lucy and Friends is a show that consistently confounds expectations is its great strength. A big ‘reveal’ has the audience gasping. To say too much would be to spoil what is, doubtless, one of the most uncomfortably hilarious moments of this or any other Fringe experience. When she appears as a ghost singing Adele, it’s a bit of relief to enjoy what is probably the sanest section of the entire show.

Lucy and Friends is a show that will definitely polarise. It will repel as many as it attracts. But it’s uncompromising, surreal, chaotic, touching and deeply, deeply hilarious.