Ever heard of Cambourne? The small town just outside of Cambridge isn’t exactly a dead ringer for Edinburgh, having been erected wholesale at the turn of the millennium, but the two places do have one thing in common if Cecily Hitchcock is to be believed: beneath the surface, they’re both stacked with medieval corpses. Not what the show is about, but an insight into the mind of our performer, whose hometown is the backdrop to a brilliant Fringe debut.
Perhaps there’s an element of bias; as someone born in the same year as Hitchcock who also grew up in the sort of suburbia where a single amenity was less common than the sight of children rollerblading or bicycles on tops of cars, I can relate. Nevertheless, I defy anyone to resist Hitchcock’s immediate charm – and impressive vocal talents – regardless of their own upbringing.
Family Recipe is ostensibly an ode to her culinary inheritance, meals that everybody else stopped cooking in the 70s but, for whatever reason, her parents held on to: sausage cabin; mackerel in aspic; bananas wrapped in ham, the latter the inspiration for possibly the best reproduction of 1940s film dialogue you’ll see all Fringe.
However, it’s so much more than that. It’s also the tale of trying to fit into British monoculture when you’re the kind of teen who thinks about the bodies underneath your hamlet; whose love of Austin Powers threatens to come out at all times, even when you’re trying to pretend you’re not gay in the nearest All Bar One.
Cecily Hitchcock: Family Recipe, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug, 8.10pm