At the Edinburgh Fringe, you will find a string of performers striving to impress you in outrageous ways. However, on this occasion, all other acts were outdone by a severed head, standing alongside a cabernet-red gowned figure with a smeared mouth and blood dripping down the chin, floating through Bristo Square.
SUCCUBUS is the play-writing debut of Yorkshire-born Georgina Collins, also known as award-winning burlesque performer, Strawberry Duvall. Inspired by Collins’ own experience of extreme physical and emotional symptoms overlooked as “hormones”, the play reacts fiercely to this ignorance through its demonic interpretation putting “men on the menu”, as we witness the captivating birth of a female monstrosity in real time.
As if reinventing Jennifer’s Body to imagine the dorky Needy in the man-eater’s shoes, the show, laced with an endearing early-2000s quality, plates up a true taste of coming of age: insatiable yet part-sapphic appetite, ramped up with a lick of unconquerable, ever-feasting teenage hormones. There have been many female centered cannibal developments in recent years, yet Succubus more than satisfies the genre with a devilish and flirtatious grin, breeding a horny and delicious new take that is delightfully bold yet refinedly nuanced.
Collins delivers a “biting”, stunningly persuasive performance as a possessed, adorably quirky, femme fatale — the most human succubus I’ve ever seen — proving a range of performance skill as she gorges on flesh and bone and flits between characters in seconds. Production is consistently impressive, with inventive sound design and lighting features genuinely comparable to West-End standard, forcing forgetfulness of its location (underground McEwan Hall cornered by blackout walls). With a spectacularly rich script, the perimeters of the confessional one-woman play are tested then defied, while audience appetites are satiated by a cathartically satisfying, blood-soaked butchering, relentless “post-glut clarity” joyride. Overall, the play is exceptionally capable at balancing playful and profound, offering an accessible entrance to the horror-comedy genre that is stripped of obnoxiousness, and instead, serving up a delectably and tastefully clever perspective as its main dish.
All I have left to say is that it was bloody brilliant. Spotify, play ‘Maneater’ by Nelly Furtado.
SUCCUBUS is running until 16th August at Dexter at Underbelly Bristo Square. Buy tickets here.
Image credit Press Release from Airtable Database.
