Cutting Off Kate Bush, Gilded Balloon, review: 'A plucky, poignant tribute'

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2014: A physically unabashed performance

Lucy Benson-Brown in Cutting Off Kate Bush (Jack Walker)

Didn’t nab a ticket for Kate Bush’s live shows? This one-woman piece might not exactly be a replacement, but it does make for a plucky, poignant tribute.

Fangirl Lucy Benson-Brown began working on it before the concerts were even announced, but this short piece is more than glorified karaoke.

She plays Cathy, a drifting 27-year-old, struggling to come to terms with her mother’s suicide some years previously.

On discovering her mum’s old Kate Bush records, Cathy begins spiraling into a nervous breakdown - albeit one costumed and soundtracked by some of the greatest wild-woman pop songs ever written.

This being a twenty-something’s crisis, she naturally turns to her computer for a ‘deeper understanding’: the wailing, drinking, confessions and swooping moves all go up on YouTube.

Benson-Brown’s poshly stroppy Millennial angst at first seems indulgent, but she soon wins you over with a physically unabashed performance, giving it her all in brassy dance routines that spring from a deep love of Kate Bush.

Alongside archly self-deprecating anecdotes, there is also an intensity of loss and yearning for the past here, and a sense that only by delving into our darkest hour can we dance back towards the light.

To 25 Aug; gildedballoon.co.uk