by ***** (out of 5)
“If you think this show is therapy, you need therapy.” So declares Lou Wall early in her breakneck breakthrough performance, which turns her 14-year relationship with her best frenemy into a richly interactive media presentation with Wall singing original songs plus raps based on Facebook message threads, DMs, and texts.
And yet, Wall’s show is also quite therapeutic.
She asks us to think of the friend we’re most jealous of, before inviting us to join her on her own jealousy-fueled journey, which begins so seemingly innocent over social media, only to reveal that the initial thirst trap leads Wall down a bottomless well toward psychosis. But jealousy is real and the internet only makes it easier to follow and harder to deal. What’s almost amazing or frankly just as or more brilliant is how, because neither the news nor the social media content machine never stop, neither does Wall’s process of updating her show. There’s a Barbie-related clip. There’s a cultural reference that she has acknowledged is perhaps outdated even since the start of Fringe! Wall’s emotional and psychological trip, however, remains relevant to us all. Even if we never explicitly answered her question, she has answered ours. The only way through it is to embrace your insecurity and set it free. Don’t kill the one you love to envy, kill the envy.
There’s a masterfully incredible reveal at the end I dare not spoil.
It is safe for me to share, however, that Wall has a line about Phoebe Waller-Bridge coming to see it, which may or may not be true. Either way, I should remind you and her that Fleabag didn’t win the Edinburgh Fringe award for Best Show, but totally won out in the end for Waller-Bridge. Whether or not Wall wins at the Fringe this year, just by writing this show in an attempt to win the non-existent competition of friendship, she may already have won a much bigger prize.
Lou Wall vs The Internet runs through Aug. 27 at Assembly George Square Studio Four
