Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Trust Me, I’m From Essex
MyFriendsLindsay Theatre Company
Genre: Fringe Theatre, Musical Theatre, One Person Show, Theatre
Venue: The Space @ Surgeons Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Lindsay Lucas-Bartlett takes on the journey of her life from Essex to London to La La Land with plenty of drama, laughs, songs and heartbreak along the way. A genuine and disarming show from the most misjudged county in England. A comedic and tragic tale of one woman’s journey to happiness.
Review
Essex is known for many things and most of them are not good. Lindsay Lucas-Bartlett agrees with this but is also on a mission to set you straight.
Trust me, I’m from Essex is a bizarrely charming mix of humour, anguish and song as we take a look at her Peter Andre obsessed beginnings at a Catholic Girls School to her Happy Brady Bunch ending across the pond. She wants you to trust her because her story is too wild to be true. Too sad in devastating succession to actually be believable but the trials of her life are not only factual but fascinating viewing.
There are trigger warnings attached to this show set in the tiny oasis of Theatre 3 in The Space’s Surgeon Hall. Touching on themes of sexual assault and suicide with harrowing openess Lucas-Bartlett delves deep but never to the point where the audience feels unsafe. This is a hard thing to achieve with such a personal story but she masters it with ease. With the addition of full musical numbers and a disarming comedic delivery we are comfortably made to feel part of her world.
An added bonus for her and also for us was there was a large contingent from Essex in the audience who were very supportive. It was a missed opportunity for there to not be more Essex based content in the show but perhaps that could be saved for a longer iteration.
It is certainly a jammed packed hour of anecdotes that are both exciting and upsetting in equal measure. I would have liked there to have been more imagination in the staging but from the promotional materials I suspect some things had to be sacrificed with the limitations of the space. It was a missed step that nothing else was stepped up in that area though.
The musical numbers were fun but sadly didn’t match the professional level of the rest of the piece. Backing tracks lacked depth and the limitations of the venue size meant the songs could not be belted out, for fear of deafening the close audience, resulting in an unsupported vocal range. This did not detract though from the overall message and sentiment of the play which offered hopefulness and joy throughout the toughest of times.
I would have liked there to be more depth and resolutions in some of the focus points but again difficult to achieve in a show of only an hours length with so much to cover.
Overall this is a charming and charismatic performance from the relatable and disarming storyteller. A story that is deserving of a larger venue and a longer running time.
Lindsay Lucas-Bartlett is a joy to watch.
