This show was not actually part of the Fringe but part of the big grown-up serious Festival, which is usually far too highbrow and intellectual for me but I was needing a cabaret fix and this fitted the bill. I was glad the venue was literally next door to my flat as if it involved another long walk I think I'd have bailed out as the feet, knees and back were all beginning to give up.
Meow Meow is Australian performer Melissa Madden Gray and this cabaret show was based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (not, as her character in the show said several times, the Disney film). The show was loosely themed around the quest for love, whether it really exists (SPOILERS - it does, apparently) with some dialogue and comedy between songs. The staging and lighting was quite impressive (a round stage with various trapdoors and cable lifts) but sadly I was stuck in the Gods and didn't have the best of views.
I'll cut to the summary - it was okay but hardly essential. Ms. Gray was a charming presence with a good voice. At one point she organised the audience in front of her and performed a stage dive - always a risky manoeuvre I've always thought for a lady, especially one in a tight corset - being handed around the audience from one end of the stage to the other, so good on her for that. The songs were decent and well performed but not very memorable - the only ones I recognised were two covers which bookended the show, Wonderful Life by Black and Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead - and the whole thing lacked a little joie de vivre and swagger which I've always associated with cabaret. It was well done, well staged ... just made me miss AFVS (Another Fucking Variety Show) more. Ms. Gray is good, but she's no Lili.
The show ended and we filed out. Fortunately I was only walking across the road to the flat. But I couldn't help but feel I had hit a wall somewhere - Day 10 at the Fringe concluded with me starting to think of chucking it in and going home ...
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