by ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Lots of Fringe shows this month employ songs of the summer from Chappell Roan and Charli XCX to hype up the crowds and themselves.
Ian Lockwood’s show is one of the rare few to keep the hyper-pop popping. Lockwood jokes “I wasn’t gay when I came to the Fringe,” but the character he portrays for “The Farewell Tour” is most decidedly queer. This Lockwood is an over-the-top pop star looking to monetize his suicide through corporate sponsorship just as soon as he can perform one last encore in one final concert.
He’s got an album’s worth of songs (or more, as it turns out when he provides links for the audience to search out after the performance), multiple costume changes, and full choreography that he has synched up to digital clones of himself displayed on the big screen behind him. All that, plus interview clips with the late great Barbara Walters. Is this the only good and fair use of AI technology to dupe voices back from the dead? Quite possibly!
But why would this Lockwood want to kill himself, anyhow? Perhaps it’s because loneliness is the price to pay for such massive fame. Perhaps he doesn’t know the difference between his fans and his true friends. Either way, Lockwood will give it his all, performing to 50 or 150 in The Wee Coo as if he were playing to a crowd of 150,000. “Where my Ian freaks at?” If he keeps this up, he’ll have many more people trying to match his freak.
