by ⭐⭐⭐⭐
There’s something extra ominous about being led through a bar into a dark, damp cave as the clock approaches midnight, receiving a wooden percussive instrument, and having your psychic energies measured by a healer who also happens to be a clown.
That this healer clown, this Medicine Woman, is actress and comedian Veronica Osorio (Hail, Caesar!; The Laundromat; countless commercial campaigns including this year’s Super Bowl ad for UberEats). And that Osorio hails from Venezuela, her native nation embroiled in even more chaos this month following a disputed election that has seen President Nicolás Maduro clinging to power through disinformation and violent strong-arm tactics. But this is not a show about Venezuela. Not exactly.
Nor is it quite like Estonian clown Julia Masli’s Best Show nominee from a summer ago. Masli sought transcendence through surreal solutions for the problems of her audience members. Osorio seemingly just wants to spread joy. Whether she’s anointing someone as the night’s “dumb bitch,” channelling an unseemly tropical lawyer, or giving us an impromptu collective Tarot reading, Osorio is a shaman looking to heal us. Turns out she needed quite a bit of healing herself, and it all does carry more significant weight due to the relevance of current events where she once called home.
But she’s able to maintain a playful, silly tone for the hour leading up those deeper moments, helped even more from a summer sojourn to France’s Ecole Philippe Gaulier after she’d already won awards at the Hollywood Fringe, where she calls home now.
No matter where she is practicing her medicine, we’ll always feel right at home with her.
“Medicine Woman” plays at Just The Tonic at The Caves during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe
