“Do you feel good?”, asks Sarah McGuinness as she heads on to the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. “Well, we’ll soon fix that.”
The story of how the Derry girl with “stars in her eyes and music in her veins” found her authentic voice is delivered in McGuinness’s chatty and confident style.
Dressed in high black boots, two-piece, and fishnets, she belts out numbers from Cabaret and elsewhere throughout this defiant and persuasive show.
Whether talking about Bloody Sunday or past romances, McGuinness is disarmingly frank as she leads us through her journey through the sidelines of stardom to a place where she feels she can freely and easily express herself.
She also has the gift of warm connection with an audience, crucial for cabaret and for introspection.
She says about the show, ““This is my own life story which only made sense after my mother’s death, when a close relative unlocked buried memories which completely changed my understanding of my early life and the negative self image it forced on me, while making me uniquely able to unlock the talents of others.
It is a collection of stories and songs, well known and original, through which, for the first time, I am telling the truth about my life that I have been asked to reveal so often before.”
This is play, cabaret, and comedy all in one. McGuinness is a bright and personable storyteller. Only visibly in the public eye as a performer since she released her debut album, she was known before that as a producer, director and designer (as Sarah Townsend), and as the singer in the indie band The Wasp Factory.
As a singer she offers a sultry interpretation of “Sooner or Later”, the Sondheim song written for the soundtrack of Dick Tracy, and an in-your-face Wilkommen.
It’s an intense performance that fits the storyline of being surrounded by terror in an unstable Ireland. A raw exploration of teenage visibility and adoption of identity.
More modern cuts features, too, with Kate Bush’s “Babooska” and David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”, which enhance a powerful and honest tale.
Not knowing much about this side of McGuinness’s work and career, I was pleased to find she was such an engaging, gregarious, and talented individual, and richly deserves to have this moment in the spotlight.
“What about me?”a young Sarah remembers wondering as she stayed in the shadows of showbusiness. Well, she’s burst out of them now.
Retitled and expanded as The Sarah McGuinness Story, this show is playing at the Etcetera Theatre in London’s Camden Town for 13 dates from 15 Sep to 4 Oct (not 20,23,26-28,30 Sep) with details here.
*****