Delivered from the gutter but looking at the stars, Fanny Bleach’s Fringe bow is a sublime freak show spectacle, like The Greatest Showman on hallucinogens. A riotous, character comedy carousel of grotesque body horror and proud, feminist expression, Emma Crowley-Bennett’s wild-eyed, multimedia hour is a once seen, never forgotten cabaret of the depraved.
Compered by Daniel, a worried-looking, bowl-cutted work experience lad thrust front of house, Crowley-Bennett’s other creations make confident, spectacular entrances, not least the bin princess who opens the show by emerging from garbage. Then there’s One Tit Wonder, a gargling-with-gravel, leopardskin-garbed, mono-breasted black widow of a woman, fleeing from the police after the suspicious deaths of her countless husbands. Hairy Mary is similarly intimidating but draws the crowd together in a life drawing class for her naked splendour, splayed across a variety of revealing poses.
Inbetween the outlandish costume changes, videos introduce further oddballs, including a sexy prawn cavorting in the bath for her webcam. Best and worst of all is a demonically insistent charity cold caller, out to harvest spare kidneys, her terrible, sing-song persistence betrayed by the spittle-flecked salivation of her close-up mouth.
Throughout, Crowley-Bennett flashes downtrodden defiance from her endearing mutant identities. And they ultimately wrest control of their own destiny, an uplifting conclusion to a nightmarish vision.
Fanny Bleach: The Nearly Naked Show, Assembly Roxy, until 30 Aug (not 15), 9.50pm