one4review | On 16, Aug 2019

I like a show with a structure like an essay: explain what’s going to happen, make it happen, recap what you’ve done, and then produce a mic-drop for a finale. Ms Morgan, as well as being a wonderful performer, knows how to manage and exceed expectations. She’s got a great voice, and her impressions of a variety of singers are impressive – accurate where useful and caricatured to great effect in others. You don’t need to know who all the impressions are, through I imagine the experience is enhanced if you at least know some.

The show is a stand-up/cabaret romp through witches in history. That could be quite an intense subject – since lots of them were tortured, persecuted or killed – but Ms Morgan gets the tone exactly right, presenting facts, but never becoming maudlin, finding comedy where she can, but pointing out where it just isn’t (how many women burned at the stake?). Ms Morgan is aided/abetted by her husband/familiar, who does an excellent job in his various supporting-character roles.

As promised in the show’s introduction, there’s some social commentary, underscored by Edge of Seventeen, lyrics which are surprisingly apt, and obviously, excellently performed. Ms Morgan’s interpolated stand up is delivered with the same verve and confidence she brings to the songs, and a musicality in her intonation of punchlines that contributes a little extra spice. The show ends with a medley of singers doing Girls just wanna have fun, and the applause would have made you think the mid-week room was full.

This show is justifiably garnering a cascade of stars, to which I am delighted to add five more.

 

Reviewed by Laura

Gilded Balloon Teviot
22:00 (until 26th)