Men’s shitbaggery has long been a source of inspiration at the Fringe, and it’s jet fuel for Elf Lyons in this bruising, brilliantly inventive show. After a run of routines centred on animals (Swan, Raven, Horses), the UK comic delivers her most personal piece yet, exorcising the anguish caused when her engagement ended via WhatsApp a few months before the big day.
Lyons channels her emotional tailspin into the title character, a hysterical, Joan Crawford-like lush who’s prone to surreal digressions about bouncy castles, mannequins and snails. Her theme music is Bernard Herrmann’s woozy score for Vertigo, an apt choice for a show dissecting what happens when your identity shatters because of the whims of childish men.
The Woman on the Edge character isn’t the only technique Lyons deploys to create distance as she interrogates her pain. An audience member is plucked from the crowd to read aloud the relationship’s backstory, while Lyons mimes along. There’s more lip-syncing (to concerned voicenotes from friends and the 90s classic Apollo 13) as well as a glorious verbatim opera constructed from wild statements various boyfriends have said to her (“No, I don’t need therapy; I walk everywhere”).
The result is a playful mosaic of standup, character comedy and clowning that seems to find genuine catharsis amid the absurdity of heartbreak. If this all sounds a bit too baroque, too theatrical, then take comfort that the show is also breathtakingly funny, with Lyons equally at home with cerebral musings about the clown Pagliacci as she is with daft prop gags involving fruit.
Elf Lyons is The Woman on the Edge, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug (not 17), 9.30pm