Candy Gigi: I’m Not Lonely

• Emma Newlands
• 26 August 2014

This article is from 2014.

Uncomfortable and often unpleasant show is important antithesis to conventional comedy

Should you become what you’re expected to? Or, like Candy Gigi, should you metaphorically tear up the rule book, don a bloodstained wedding dress, and chew up and spit out fruit, veg and toothpaste all over the audience?

A few walkouts inevitably follow, but anyone staying the distance gets a little more insight into what lies at the heart of her act. 'I don't know how I get away with it', she muses, underneath a regularly-referenced sign reading 'Please find me funny'.

The audience is rendered too stunned to move by her arresting stage presence, combined intriguingly with wry self-awareness ('I'm too mainstream'). The former stage school pupil briefly reveals a striking singing voice; the rockier road through lipstick-smeared vegetable-based performance art therefore winning out over the path of less resistance, the more instantly gratifying reality show or musical theatre route. 'I'm quite an acquired taste' she informs us, not inaccurate when she’s rocking a bunch of parsnips like a baby, a dream client for a Freudian.

All in all, it's startling, uncomfortable and often unpleasant to watch. But it's an important, unforgettable, shake-you-by-the-lapels hour in a world where buckling under the pressure of convention wins all too often.

The Hive, run ended.