Elf Lyons Is The Woman On The Edge comedy review: Clever and profound
Elf Lyons isn’t clowning around with this latest show which links a Hollywood blockbuster to her own relationship woes
There will not be many break-up stories involving 1995 blockbuster Apollo 13, a bouncy castle and a woman dressed as a horse but, then again, there aren’t many performers as wonderfully eccentric as Elf Lyons. Stand-up comedian and writer Lyons describes her new show as a ‘completely normal autobiographical (and in no way complex)’ comedy about love. And that’s exactly what you get in this wonderfully bizarre creation.
The Woman On The Edge has Lyons turning the breakdown of her engagement into an hour of gloriously strange clowning, storytelling and controlled chaos. Instead of the comic telling us a story straight from A to B, we go on a wild journey through fragments of her love life, inner monologues, texts from men, songs and some good old space facts thrown in for good measure. It feels unpredictable, but never without purpose.
Apollo 13 serves as an anchor amid the chaos, from the opening mission-control chatter to audio clips and metaphors woven through Lyons’ own life. The film becomes an unlikely but surprisingly effective metaphor running through it all. The mission never reached the moon, but the crew returned safely, asking the question: was it really a failure? Lyons asks something similar about relationships. If two people loved one another, shared a life and eventually separated, does the ending mean everything that came before was unsuccessful?
Lyons’ storytelling is absurd, eccentric, silly and whimsical but, most importantly, intelligent. She switches between accents as seamlessly as she does her characters (a clown, a storyteller, a heartbroken almost-bride) with remarkable ease. There is a fearlessness to her performance. Lyons lays everything out, completely vulnerable to the audience and, in her own peculiar way, finds humour in even the most distressing parts of her story.
Yet beneath the absurdity, is something painfully sincere. There are glimpses of what the future had once held for her: a wedding, a honeymoon and a life with the person she expected to grow old beside. When the silliness briefly falls away, the loss underneath it feels surprisingly raw. Heartbreak rarely follows a straight narrative which is why the chaos works so well here. Instead, Lyons makes memories, jokes, fantasies and moments of sadness collide as she attempts to make sense of what happened. Chaotic, clever and profoundly peculiar, The Woman On The Edge finds something unexpectedly hopeful among the wreckage. Sometimes things can end without having failed.
Elf Lyons Is The Woman On The Edge, Pleasance Courtyard, until 31 August, 9.30pm; picture: Richard Lakos.