Fringe musicals and opera reviews: Legendary | Texas Annie: The Legend of the Moan Ranger | Little Pink Dress | The Last Five Years | Lisa! The Mona Lisa Musical | An A to Z Guide to Dating

Cheeyang Ng in Legendary | Photography by Jayden Tan

MUSICALS AND OPERA

Legendary ★★★★★

Friesian at Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 31 August

There is an air of childhood on the stage set for Cheeyang Ng’s Legendary. Yellow balloons frame the space while an overhead projector displays an invitation for the audience – what would you say to your child, or inner child?

Ng welcomes us to their musical by asking us to sing on a middle C, a note that “feels like home”. From there, the audience is treated to Ng’s honeyed voice as they contextualise their upbringing, migration and queerness through Chinese myth and legend. The music, only their voice and a piano, is serene and undulating, rising to crescendo in tandem with lyrics that grapple with, assert and offer their learnings of themself.

There is an ease with which Ng traverses the Fringe spectre of audience participation. They never give us an out, but there is something trustworthy in their invitation to sing – and loudly – that promises Ng is firmly on our side. It’s a feat that in other cases would ensure mishaps, but Ng manages to protect us from embarrassment with their well-timed and sure instruction. There are special moments involving the audience, from offering a mooncake to a viewer who never had one, to having an audience member enact Ng as a child, that build a true sense of collectivity rare in any theatrical offering.

While the show is poignant, it’s also hilarious, weaving the weight of legends with relatable contemporary touchstones: dating on Zoom during the pandemic, for example, or the Millennial albatross that was Ryan Murphy’s Glee. Underscoring all of it are Ng’s questions about cultural legacy, and where best to bloom as a queer person rooted in and reverent of family tradition. They find their best answers in Chinese legends, and their performance builds to a cathartic act of collective myth-making, which they offer especially to queer and/or Asian audience members.

Legendary is completely singular, earning the audience’s emotion and tears – of which there are many. Ng says this is a dream realised, and there is certainly a sense of gratitude and pride in the room to be a part of it. Mika Morava

MUSICALS AND OPERA

Texas Annie: The Legend of the Moan Ranger ★★★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 15 August

The right to own a star-spangled dildo becomes a proxy for civil liberties in this rainbow-hearted cartoon caper comedy musical that is based in the real-life outlawing of sex toys in Texas. While the legislation is apparently not practical to uphold as it’s unconstitutional, for this lively crew of diverse show people, there’s no hole in a plot that can’t be filled with a sparkly butt plug.

With the pop punk spirit of Avenue Q, a cardboard cactus set and a box of sex-inspired puppets and props, it follows the transformation of Annie from a state-oppressed shop assistant to a Western-loving vigilante with a stick-on mustache who rescue-kidnaps the governor’s daughter Ashley from her conservative boyfriend Bradley – a couple who have stepped straight out of Lichtenstein painting – before ending up in bed with her, a pile of “initiate massagers for the needy”, and a snake.

At a time when the American government is increasing legislating on gender, what could be – and is – a silly farce also has serious points to make about the First Amendment; one that it sees best to deliver through Christian pop, cowboy culture and anything else that it’s adversaries might see as their own.

The story at times risks becoming nonsensical, even by its own fluid logic, but in taking the idea of trans into the art of turning one thing into another, it an ever ingenious and invigorating ride -- a childish production about adult sex that pairs childish and adult humour to ask the ultimate childish question: “Who cares?”

Punchily choreographed and pacily performed, a song about how “everybody has a body” and “there are lots of variations beyond basic girl and boy” mimics evangelical ecstasy of the most all-encompassing church. Putting the sex back in Texas as they say, delivered through a megamix of music, god and the Wild, in all senses, West. Sally Stott

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MUSICALS AND OPERA

Little Pink Dress ★★★

C aquila (Venue 21) until 30 August

The rose-coloured garment of the show’s title is what primary-aged Joey Jennings would slip into for comfort after yet another traumatic day at school, as one of the songs in his very personal, gay solo country/rock musical explains. Though whether Little Pink Dress can be called a musical is open to debate: perhaps an autobiographical album performed live might be more accurate, or even a song cycle addressing (absent) daddy issues, Hollywood casting frustrations and the near impossibility of finding a relationship longer than a night or two.

If you’re looking for a traditionally fulfilling story arc, or even dazzlingly new insights into gay life, you might come away disappointed at the bewilderingly broad subjects of Jennings’s songs, and the show’s reluctance to tie up the threads it tantalisingly begins to unravel. What holds it all together, though - and what makes it such a pleasure to experience - is Jenning’s engaging personality and excellent performance, with a voice as luscious as ruffled velvet and a nice line in perky dance moves too. He’s a captivating presence, and he clearly sings from the heart - but ultimately Little Pink Dress feels a lot like, as he describes in one of his songs, the kind of therapy he longs for but can never achieve. David Kettle

MUSICALS AND OPERA

The Last Five Years ★★★

Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) until 15 August

Jason Robert Brown’s intimate musical two-hander from 2001 tells the story of a five-year relationship, from beginning to break-up. Its unusual structure means that the two protagonists each offer their own version, Jamie telling the story chronologically and Cathy in reverse, through an alternating sequence of songs. They sing together only once, on the day they marry.

This chamber version in the Vault Annex, with minimal set and recorded music (which is a little too loud), is smaller than some previous Fringe productions. Ben Templeton is superb as the gloriously self-centred Jamie, a literary hot shot whose first novel rockets up the bestseller charts, and at the performance I saw, Bailey Keith (standing in for Anna Schneider) was a poignantly vulnerable Cathy, struggling to make her way as an actor.

The structure of interweaving time frames means that clarity is extra-important, and it’s not always enough simply to rely on the songs, as this production does. But Brown’s heartfelt numbers capture the complexities of a real relationship, particularly when one party experiences significant career success and the other struggles to live in their shadow. Susan Mansfield

MUSICALS AND OPERA

Lisa! The Mona Lisa Musical ★★★

C ARTS | C venues | C aquila (Venue 21) until 16 August

Fosse meets Footlights in this peppy little musical that loosely hangs itself on the 1911 theft (and return) of the Mona Lisa which, itself, appears to have been just as loosely hung on the gallery of the Louvre. Throw in a time travel adventure, a free-hand approach to plot – that draws in Marie Curie, Vitruvian Man, a robot, 60 singing detectives, and more – and reality becomes a flimsy frame that the all-singing, all-dancing chorus of cast members are happy to regularly break.

It’s full of Fringe energy and metaphysics, with some clever jokes and its own intriguing logic from writer, actor, composer and maths teacher Xavier Fawcett who, it’s perhaps not a surprise to hear, won the TV quiz show The 1% Club – which is how this show and a companion improvised musical have been funded.

The cast don’t take themselves too seriously, but they’re a seriously talented and tightly choreographed ensemble, accompanied by characterful pianist, co-composer Finlay Stafford. The amdram dialogue, with one eye always on the audience, is less consistently polished, and the plot swerves are as shaky as the jazz hands. Developing a coherent story isn’t primarily what this show is about; more cramming in as many ideas, characters and genres as possible before time, space and the script implode. Sally Stott

MUSICALS AND OPERA

An A to Z Guide to Dating ★★★

Underbelly, George Square (Venue 300) until 31 August

Grace O’Keeffe is running late for her own show, so her mom takes the stage instead – except “mom” is Grace in drag, with bottom padding, feather boas, and silk dressing gowns, promoting her dating advice book, which publishers warned would set feminism back twenty years. There’s a “man famine” on, she announces, and besides, “it’s not easy being a feminist these days.”

She flirts shamelessly with the front row and belts one catchy number after another, brash but sharply timed, the props escalating from tearaway trousers to a vibrator to tampons rebranded as “the modern chastity belt.” Grace herself interrupts the action to clarify and corroborate her mother’s stories.

Underneath the excess, though, is a sharper show about inheriting someone else’s idea of womanhood. When Grace first discovers her mother’s book, its confidence is both thrilling and scandalising. “I don't know how to be me when you're watching me,” she admits, wondering how she might become her own woman rather than her mother’s understudy. The penultimate song strains for sentiment, but the finale doesn’t need to: a closing compilation number and a voice-over exchange with her mother earn their warmth. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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