Online Fringe 2020
Lady M
Three Chairs and a Hat
Genre: Musical Theatre, Solo Show
Venue: online@thespaceUK
Festival: Online Fringe
Low Down
Lady M is a style guru, a lifestyle coach who is at home and ready to talk directly to you, through the internet. With wand and cymbals, akimbo we are entertained by words and song through quintessential questions and for today we, the crème de la crème are given wise words of vacuous wisdom.
Review
At its heart this is a fantastic idea. Recasting one of the villains of the Scottish play as a lifestyle coach, given that she is cast as giving the most vicious lifestyle of all to her husband but there are things letting this musical down.
Although his is but an extract of the whole, and Susanne Hodgson does a great job of giving us a glimpse into the psychotic psychosis of a huge character, there are holes in the delivery. This is partly through a script which does have some reference to the original, makes some connection to the Scottish nature of it all – Muriel Spark would have loved the deference – whilst the script has tropes, it lacks the bits in between.
The idea that Lady M has much more to say on the state of the Union, any union, the state of life itself, the types of gurus we have become absorbed by and the topics that have made us all bow to the Gods of exercise, diet and smashed avocado is left hanging. Is there something that works for Lady M as a Woke guru? Is putting the career before the family life that you never had a positive feminist choice? I hope that the full length version has more of this dramatic heart. Here we get a glimpse of being clever with the words and I feel that Hodgson, in particular, could be trusted with more of the heart.
Of course, this was snippet and it may be unfair to pass judgment without seeing the whole but there was not a lot of indication that this set up might deliver on these ideas.
The performance from Hodgson was great and engaging – if that is right for Lady M, whilst the setting made sense and the direction was apt from Alice Evans.
This has great potential and I would love to see the whole thing because there is such possibility on display. The worry may well be though that it does not manage to get out of being a potentially great piece, but there are signs it shall emerge.
