Fanny Bleach review: A creative and playful reclamation
Edinburgh Fringe
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Edinburgh Fringe 〰️
Image: Ray Malone
by Zoe Paskett
Rebellious and playful in equal measure, Fanny Bleach’s The Nearly Naked Show is simply brilliant. A combination of drag, cabaret and character comedy, it’s a glorious freak show that counts a one-boobed fugitive, a prawn star, and a long-haired life model among its stars.
Creator/star Emma Crowley-Bennett holds the whole room mesmerised from the very start when she emerges from a big wheely bin, bedecked in bags for life. The creativity that surrounds every aspect of this performance is something to behold, and her total full-body commitment keeps the audience fully hooked.
With Miz Barber’s direction and fantastical, larger-than-life costumes by Freya Wright, she inhabits this ghastly heap of characters, all brought together by work experience Daniel, our MC for the evening, decked out in a blonde bowl cut and jacket with comically long sleeves. He’s quivering with nervous excitement, as though both thrilled to be there and waiting for someone to put a stop to it, a ringing phone exacerbating his anxiety.
The characters we meet are indeed freaks (as we are told) but you can feel each of them pushing against something. As well as being extraordinarily funny, The Nearly Naked Show is a big “fuck you” to any men who think they can use their perceived power to control or denigrate women. It acts as a reclamation of her body, as she revels in every movement and facial expression with a kind of grizzly poise.
This is the sort of show that I long for at the Fringe, and I never feel like I’ve properly arrived until I’ve seen it — something queer and weird and extravagant that has an audience hooting and hollering, singing along with the finale, and going out into the night feeling like they’ve just experienced something rare.
Fanny Bleach: The Nearly Naked Show is at Assembly Roxy, Downstairs, 21:50 (not 18th, 25th). Tickets here
