REVIEW: Lady Celeste: A Star Is Reborn, Camden Fringe at the Phoenix Artist Club ✭✭✭

Lady Celeste: A Star is Reborn Camden Fringe at the Phoenix Artist Club 19 August 2014 3 Stars

I remember my first time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and, in particular, two one person shows which were hysterical, peculiar and powerfully individual in nature. I can still feel,their power now, nearly 20 years later. Many great solo performers get their start at Fringe Festivals and one of the real obligations of theatre lovers is to support and encourage such performers. Not all great work happens magically at the National or in the West End; some artists have to struggle to find a place in the Sun.

But there is nothing quite like being there at the Dawn of the emergence of a new star.

Now playing at the Phoenix Artist Club, part of the eclectic and rewarding Camden Fringe programme, which has not enough publicity and patronage given its range and entertainment potential, is a solo turn by Lady Celeste - A Star is Reborn.

Lady C is a grand old theatrical creature. Think part Talleluhah Bankhead, part Dame Edna Everage, part Marlene Dietrich and part Roseanne Barr, add a fabulous Art Deco look (costume, pearls, flaming red wig) and you have the idea.

The conceit of the show is that this faded Grande Dame is making a comeback, telling tales of her more active days; if Sally Bowles were a redhead and had lived long enough and been good enough to have a comeback, Lady Celeste might be she.

There is rehearsed banter which charts part of the story of Lady C's life (clever, quite insightful writing, brimming with colour and comedy), some singing (varying degrees of success there but more often than not the responsibility of the appalling pianist who provided little or no support to the vocalist) and quite a lot of vicious or acutely satirical improvisation.

And it is there, in the improvised on-the-spot derisive attacks on the audience, that Lady Celeste reaches stellar levels of grandeur.

It is not at all easy to improvise comedy, to judge a movement, a statement, a turn of the head of an audience member which can be converted into a rich lode of comic possibility. Easy or not, Lady Celeste has this ability and excels at it.

The room was charged with electric expectation every time Lady Celeste honed in on a victim and delivered a tongue-lashing or tongue-caressing (depending on the level of seriousness of the victim's transgression). These were genuinely hilarious moments of pure theatrical joy.

Lady Celeste is a complete package. The character is thoroughly thought through by her creator, Julian Lovick, and is as real and accessible as Dame Edna. Soft satire is the oxygen for Lady Celeste and her fire-breathing ripostes and assaults on the audience are pure gold.

Like all Fringe productions, it is not all perfect here. The pianist ruins a deal of the material. But the other musicians, especially the laid back Italian bass player, add a layer of divine complacency which is perfect for the grandeur that Lady Celeste exudes.

This is a tremendously funny 50 minutes, and the moments of on-the-spot improvisation are deliciously judged and delivered.

Get in at the ground level - see Lady Celeste now before she is propelled into the stratosphere. It's always good to say "I was there when it started".

And make no mistake - Lady Celeste will take off. She is a true theatrical treat.

Beautiful, sublime and dripping in style.

Runs until August 24. Book tickets for Lady Celeste: A Star Is Reborn