Paul T Davies reviews Scaredy Fat now playing at Underbelly as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Scaredy Fat
Underbelly, Edinburgh Fringe
4 Stars
Here's an interesting perspective on LGBTQ experience and narrative. Writer and performer Colm McCready has taken the tropes of horror movies, especially those involving teenagers, and the tropes used against "overweight" people and compares the two. It throws up some interesting perspectives and makes the audience question how we see "victims" and blame culture.
McCready is an engaging, highly likeable performer, his horror fandom providing a strong structure for his exploration. There's a nice homemade feel to the show, with a throwback to the times of VHS tapes, and there is excellent work engaging with the impressive animation by Fergus Wachala Kelly and the production plays those well-known horror movies with aplomb.
The show is a little too long, becoming highly repetitive in places, but when he smashes through the fat phobia expressed towards him, what remains is a thought-provoking piece that challenges your inbuilt bias.
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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