Writer: Candy Gigi
Director and co-creator: Valentina Ceschi
Music: Jordan Paul Clarke
Shabbat Shalom. Candy Gigi invites her audience for a sophisticated Friday night dinner in glamorous Borehamwood. Entertainment includes song, puppetry, chaos, mayhem and a whole lot of bodily fluids.
Candy is a little unsatisfied. She live as the beard to her gay husband whilst maintaining an orthodox Jewish lifestyle, which includes sending her knickers to the rabbi so he can declare her period officially over. She longs for other things, for fame and glory, to relieve her shining moment as winner of Borehamwood’s Got Talent and become the lead starlet in the Borehamwood Community Theatre’s production of Sunset Boulevard. She wants to be the Jewish Barbra Streisand.
Self-described as having a ‘voice like a foghorn and moves like the Elephant Man”, Candy actually has a very good voice. There are a number of songs, accompanied on piano by hated husband, David. Whether it’s describing the bristling life of Borehamhood (it has all the main charity shops), conveying her mother’s views on reproduction, or imagining a cosy domestic future as the worst of all stage-mums; Candy gets a chance to Idina Menzel her way through a number of catchy tunes and she does it with aplomb.
She’s also a great physical comedian. The impression of her mother is the closest thing possible to a human-skeksi, while her lips, tongue and teeth can move and gyrate in ways no lips, tongue and teeth were designed to.
Candy’s joined on stage by a number of props, many of them outsized body parts and many of them capable of drizzling an audience. In a show that frequently shocks and surprises, it’s best to keep some secrets, but Candy Gigi: Friday Night Sinner! includes depictions of the subconscious and The Almighty that are not easily forgotten.
On entering the auditorium, the audience are asked to review a warning list of explicit content. It’s a show that cackles through dark subject matter and ignores proprietary. The character of Candy is a monster, a self-centred ego-maniac who will do anything to appear on the front page of The Jewish Chronicle. She should be detestable and the show unwatchable but the script is sharp, the songs are good and everything is presented with gusto and a joyful lack of abandon.
It’s not a show for everyone, but for an audience looking for shocks and laughs with no qualms about good taste, it will definitely satisfy.
Runs Until: 20 May 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Lots of flavour
