My Name Is Sue

There’s been a fair amount of buzz, well… buzzing around My Name Is Sue, the absurd musical comedy debuting at the Pleasance. Already, it has been attracting the attention of Fringe veterans such as Perrier-winning comedian Laura Solon with its heady mix of cross-dressing, falsetto harmonies and frankly surreal lyrics.

Starring the award-winning Welsh composer Dafydd James, the show tells the banal life story of the eponymous frumpy heroine through a collection of weird and quite wonderful songs. James, although quite obviously in drag, makes an often disconcertingly believable woman, his performance a pitch-perfect parody of a constantly upbeat, slightly insane, piano teacher. 

But there’s a darkness about Sue, which sits uncomfortably—and deliberately so—alongside an almost obscenely catchy soundtrack. My Name Is Sue is often a very bleak play and, as time passes, we are increasingly led to question our host’s sanity. Sue pops pills and, several times, appears on the verge of complete breakdown. This is an interesting device, and one that seems to build up to something in the finale, where Sue’s manner alternates between her breezy, falsetto self and something more akin to Vincent Price. It looks as though Sue is about to be revealed as a schizophrenic, and the banal madness and drug taking teeters on the edge of making sense. 

But this is not where My Name Is Sue ends up. There is no tidy ending. There's no real sense of closure and what we are ultimately left with is a production full of ideas that gets swallowed up by unsatisfying ambiguity: it is a play which feels unfinished.