Gabey Lucas @ Hoots Nicholson Square
Gabey Lucas brings a quirky style and charming affect, plus a real sense of fun, to her show at the Edinburgh Fringe
Nonchalantly slipping an exercise band around her ankles, Gabey Lucas hardly acknowledges the crowd for the first few minutes of the show. Eventually, and with a charmingly awkward affect, Lucas informs us that she is actually using the show as a means to remind herself to do her “butt exercises”. When she’s finished, she wipes her brow and bewilderedly picks up the microphone. It’s as though she's walked out of her bedroom and onto the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s endearing, in a sort of Michael Cera way. What else could you really expect from a show called Check Out This Potato That Looks Like a Beluga Whale?
In all honesty, the potato looks very little like a beluga whale. The potato has almost no bearing on the show itself, besides indicating Lucas’ generally quirky style of comedy. The show oscillates between off-the-wall stand-up and oblique glimpses into Lucas’ own life, with the audience awkwardly integrated. Beware, you might be gifted the all-powerful kazoo – well, all-powerful if you count four chances to remind Lucas to do her butt exercises as a power. If you sit in the front row, you may have the slightly bizarre experience of feeding water into her mouth, or pumping her inhaler! Violations of the fourth wall are pretty customary for the Fringe these days, but when performed without much confidence (or reason), they become awkward. At times, it’s unclear what kind of relationship Lucas is attempting to cultivate with her audience.
What Lucas does bring to the table, besides an opportunity to aid in her self-maintenance, is a quirky sense of humour grounded in the experiences of her everyday life. One of her strongest bits is about being gifted an absurdly large bag of dried red beans by her sister for her twenty-ninth birthday. Now thirty-one, she’s hardly made a dent in them. Existentialism gains a newfound potency when the threat of being crushed to death by one’s own beans becomes a possibility.
Beneath all this quirkiness, though, what emerges from Lucas’ hour is actually quite the humbling lesson: to appreciate the simple things in life which bring us joy. There is no shame in doing something “just for fun,” she reminds us, both by words and performance.
Gabey Lucas: Check Out This Potato That Looks Like A Beluga Whale, Hoots @ Nicholson Square (Nic 8), until 31 Aug, 4.10pm, pay what you can in advance from £8.50 or donations on exit