SWAMPLESQUE – A BURLESQUE PARODY, ASSEMBLY HALL, EDINBURGH
★★★
Comic capers may be tame but still fire the crowd up
By royal decree of Lord Farquad, it’s time to ‘make some noise’! Or so the pre-show announcement commands, having already run through the prerequisite disclaimers that this is a parody show with no connection to official productions of Shrek whether on film or stage. And so begins a saucy retelling of the story of everybody’s favourite ogre. Strictly for ages 16 plus, naturally.
As drag burlesque parodies go, it’s a fairly tame and often haphazard affair. That it opens with Shrek stripping will come as no surprise to those au fait with burlesque, that this particular strip (not all the way) instantly fires up the audience into a frenzy of should not necessarily be taken as good thing, although this sight of this particular Shrek unexpectedly doing the splits does indeed deserve to raise the decibel levels further. Shrek’s opening routine is the start of a catwalk of fairy tale characters familiar to fans of the Dreamworks’ animation or the smash hit stage musical everywhere.
Pinocchio is first, cavorting around a barren black-box stage with the Three Little Pigs as their backing dancer while lip-synching to Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy. Donkey, an endearing turn from Henny Spaghetti, is next. Donkey can do the splits too, this time as One Night Only from Dreamgirls blasts out. The evil and somewhat curvaceous and acrobatic Lord Farquad is next, all old-school panto principal boy and sexy posturing as he/she mimes to The Flying Lizards’ I Want Money. And the Lord Farquad too strips.
In fact, every entrance ends up much the same way, with the exception of The Magic Mirror – a blinding Christian Nimri sporting a dazzling mirror suit, that never quite shines as brightly as it could the result of a fairly basic lighting design. Likewise, a Blind Date pastiche featuring Cinderella, Snow White and Princess Fiona as they battle for a Blind Date with Farquad is never fully realised.
As the green Princess, Tash York brings the only live vocals of the night to proceedings with powerful renditions of Queen’s Somebody To Love and, later in the show, the Nina Simone favourite I Put A Spell On You. The former is quickly followed by Tugboat Tiffy’s predictable Gingerbread Man routine before Shrek returns to embark on his Farquad-set quest to win back his swamp home… and then strips again… and does the splits again – both have the, by now baying crowd screaming even louder with delight and on occasion revulsion.
Bebe Gunn’s impressive female fire-breathing dragon brings a moment of top drawer drag to the fore, even if her blink and you’ll miss it fire breathing moment doesn’t quite achieve the dramatic effect expected and before long stripping Shrek’s is back to, yes, you’ve guessed it, he also does the splits.
Loosely directed on an expanse of bare stage with no set and limited design, and with hit or miss lip-synching and a hotch-potch of ideas thrown at the stage two see what sticks, Swamplesque is a basic Fringe cabaret out of its depth in such a venue as the Assembly Hall and begs the question: Is this really the best Edinburgh Christmas has to offer? That said, the stag and hen market will lap it up and there’s little doubt it’ll prove a popular kick start for many a festive party night, saved by the natural charisma of its performers.
Indeed, as Bebe Gunn thanks the audience after a raucous ‘festive’ sing-a-long finale that has the crowd clapping and cheering along, you can’t help wondering how much better it might have been had the drag queen narrated the show live, riffing with the audience along the way, rather than leaving that to a recorded voice.
Runs until 4 January 2025. Tickets here.
