LUCY AND FRIENDS at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“You will leave gasping for air, and an urgent desire to wash your hands.”

Lucy McCormick returns to the Soho Theatre with another outrageous, audacious, and electrifying show that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, and with an umbrella to hand.

Is it cabaret? Is it comedy? Is it a comment on the precarious basis of artistic endeavour in 2024’s Britain? Is it, McCormick asks whilst downing a bottle of red wine, art? The answer to all of these has to be emphatically yes.

If you have come to McCormick through her galvanising performance in Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights, or as part of the RSC’s Cowbois ensemble, you may have a shock. McCormick’s shows are loosely based on cabarets in that they contain several semi-distinct performances. She sings and dances to a professional level. There is often a throughline: previous shows have looked at women through history, and the New Testament. But then she will dial the subversive elements to eleven.

While the audience is still filing in for this show, McCormick can be seen dashing around them, dressed as a Christmas tree, handing out props to select audience members. You’re left darting your eyes between her and the stage, set up in classic cabaret style. There’s a glitter curtain backdrop, fairy lights framing that, and metal rigging surround it all like a proscenium arch. Centre stage is a pole. So far, so conventional, so Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.

“Though some performances push the boundaries of what’s acceptable in theatres, underpinning them all is McCormick’s phenomenal talent”

Then the lights go down, McCormick takes a microphone, and immediately upends multiple theatrical conventions, taking the audience on an emotional rollercoaster. The concept behind Lucy and Friends is that having developed much of this material in the aftermath of the pandemic, there was not enough funding to support other performers. This is therefore McCormick’s first solo show, and she needs help from the audience to be her friends, community, and fellow performers.

It is hard to describe much else that happens without ruining the jokes that emerge from the unwinding of set ups. In brief then, highlights included the act with the pole, a reinterpretation of Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why”, a cat impression, and a reminder of 2016’s viral Bottle Flipping craze.

Though some performances push the boundaries of what’s acceptable in theatres, underpinning them all is McCormick’s phenomenal talent. Even the most absurd situations, that have the audience somewhere between being in stitches and shock, she is utterly in control of both herself and them. Her voice is strong, tackling big songs that juxtapose what else is happening visually. Audience members who are called upon to participate are at her beck and call. It is worth saying there is a sizable amount of nudity and sexual content, so maybe not worth seeing with family… unless you are the audience member designated to play McCormick’s mother.

Another audience member is assigned to be a critic, and McCormick narrates her own review for them, much more articulately than I have managed here. However for all the concept, callbacks and motifs, Lucy and Friends is still desperately funny. You will leave gasping for air, and an urgent desire to wash your hands.

LUCY AND FRIENDS at the Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 29th February 2024

by Rosie Thomas

Photography by Jonny Ruff

Previously reviewed at this venue:

WISH YOU WEREN’T HERE | ★★★ | February 2024

REPARATIONS | ★★★ | February 2024

SELF-RAISING | ★★★★★ | February 2024

FLIP! | ★★★★ | November 2023

BOY PARTS | ★★★★ | October 2023

BROWN BOYS SWIM | ★★★½ | October 2023

STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY | ★★★★★ | September 2023

KATE | ★★★★★ | September 2023

EVE: ALL ABOUT HER | ★★★★★ | August 2023

STRING V SPITTA | ★★★★ | August 2023

BLOODY ELLE | ★★★★★ | July 2023

PETER SMITH’S DIANA | ★ | July 2023

LUCY AND FRIENDS

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CABLE STREET at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“a good effort to remind the audience of the power of the people against malevolent political forces”

It’s not often that you get a musical written about your old street. As a previous resident of one of the roads leading off Cable Street, I’ve passed by the large mural commemorating the 1936 Battle of Cable Street numerous times without looking deeply into this symbol of mass resistance to fascism.

Now, in the model of Hamilton or Operation Mincemeat, writers Alex Kanefsky (book) and Tim Gilvin (music and lyrics) have pulled together a reflective show that uses song and dance to surface this lesser-known historic event. As in Hamilton, the music reflects a variety of cultures, with hip hop references layered on top of Jewish and Irish musical references. As in Operation Mincemeat, the fascists get arguably the best song.

For those who were not paying attention to their interwar British history, the Battle of Cable Street is so named after the road on which a patchwork army of Jewish, Irish, Socialist and Trade Union groups held back thousands of Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists set on marching through what was then a predominantly Jewish area of East London. The musical interpretation uses the story of three families to explore just some of the hundreds of thousands in the motley coalition. The Battle of Cable Street has since become known as the day that fascism in Britain was defeated, and prevented it ever gaining a political hold on the country.

The show is framed by a modern day East End walking tour recounting this history, with an overbearing tourist from New York asking questions about her mother, once a local. This walking tour pops up in several scenes, either interrupting the events playing out in 1936, or contrasting with rival (and rather tasteless) Jack the Ripper tours that stomp the same cobbled streets.

If the stories of three families and two warring walking tours sounds like a few too many strands, you might be correct. At times the compact performance space of the Southwark Playhouse felt a little cramped; this worked well when presenting about the claustrophobic housing, and less so when trying to follow contrasting narratives. Actors playing instruments on stage to accompany the semi-concealed band also contributed to the cluttering of the space. Aoife Mac Namara’s fiddle made sense in the numbers with a gaelic undertone, but the electric guitar felt out of place.

The central playing space is surrounded on three sides by seating, with the back wall covered with haphazard wired and wooden fencing. On stage is a large bureau, two desks and chairs pushed against the back. These are regularly repositioned to create the different scenes, with the simplicity working well. On the whole, the set (Yoav Segal) and props were used effectively, except a very obviously homemade horse head used to represent a police cavalry came across as more Blue Peter than War Horse.

Of the 1936 events, Sha Dessi as Mairead Kenny, daughter of an Irish immigrant, drives the show forward with strong vocals and resolute determination. Dessi’s character has to balance fervent revolutionary zeal with a laundry list of responsibilities. She meets and falls for Sammy Scheinberg (Joshua Ginsberg), the rapping son of Jewish family living close who is struggling to find work. Similarly, Ron Williams (Danny Colligan) is a northerner from Lancashire who is also failing to find any work, but unlike Sammy who gets influenced by Mairead into coming along to communist meetings, Ron falls into the fascist embrace.

The ensemble cast was stuffed with talent, with supporting actors contending with multiple character changes. Debbie Chazen as the visiting New Yorker, Mairead’s Irish mother, and also a bumbling police officer was a standout, as was Jade Johnson whose solo Stranger / Sister was performed with sensitivity and power. Sophia Ragavelas who leads one of the strongest songs in the show – a rousing No Pasaran in the model of Les Miserables barricade scene – was also a highlight.

There are many things that work well with Cable Street, though ultimately it neither gets the high tension and deep emotion of Hamilton, or the tongue in cheek hilarity of Mincemeat. The ending is unsatisfactory – with a rush of events that threaten to derail the entire show and saved by the unveiling of a man who we already know isn’t dead. As a small point, the modern day East End is not well represented – there’s only one mention of the Bangladeshi community in passing (a 1978 murder) who have contributed so much to the area in the past 50 years.

Given the current political environment and rise of antisemitism across the UK, this is a good effort to remind the audience of the power of the people against malevolent political forces, featuring a strong selection of upbeat musical numbers. However, a little more restraint from director Adam Lenson, or a pruning of the dense narratives might have helped tell this important story a little better.

LUCY AND FRIENDS at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“You will leave gasping for air, and an urgent desire to wash your hands.”

“Though some performances push the boundaries of what’s acceptable in theatres, underpinning them all is McCormick’s phenomenal talent”

LUCY AND FRIENDS at the Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 29th February 2024

by Rosie Thomas

Photography by Jonny Ruff

Previously reviewed at this venue:

LUCY AND FRIENDS

LUCY AND FRIENDS

CABLE STREET at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“a good effort to remind the audience of the power of the people against malevolent political forces”

CABLE STREET at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 26th February 2024

by Rosie Thomas

Photography by Jane Hobson

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

CABLE STREET

CABLE STREET