one4review | On 12, Aug 2019

This is the hottest venue I have ever been in, so Mr McQueen deserves considerable commendation for keeping the audience awake and engaged. He acknowledged the fact the room was a sauna, and this – and his unwavering energy in presenting the show – went a long way to bring us as an audience on board.

The show’s a compilation of silliness: Mr McQueen in a fetching dress and less fetching make-up, an audient co-opted onto stage to be player two, selfies with the audience, and stories about his mother and her Thai groom. Ultimately, this is a show about love, and whether pretend love is better than being alone. On this, it is an idiosyncratic rather than conventional meditation, and since it’s absurdist in form, some bits might seem rather tenuous – but for some inexplicable reason, it seems to work.

Mr McQueen’s tetchy, rather frustrated, and somehow also disaffected demeanour doesn’t alienate the audience – rather it seemed to make us like him more. There are some flashes of a happier Luke when an audience response startles him into smiling. Mr McQueen seems to enjoy what he’s doing, and the audience did too.

Reviewed by Laura

Monkey Barrell 5
17:55 (not 14th)