Review by Steve Bennett

Candy Gigi Markham has only one setting on the intensity scale… and that’s ‘off it’. For this is a full-throttle, full-volume tirade of raw, insane, filthy clowning that offers no respite from the madness.

Sustaining the craziness of a ten-minute club set over a full hour is quite the challenge,so here the 27-year-old has devised a twisted, vaguely autobiographical musical about her fiercely Jewish mother trying to seek a husband for her.

Somehow the Golders Green matriarch doesn’t think her daughter’s stage persona – in which she variously dons a saggy-titted nude suit, spits out chunks of cucumber into the crowd, and mock-humps a man dressed as a giant chicken – is the best way to flirt.

If I Had A Rich Man is full of such comically harrowing imagery, which you’ll recall days later, maybe with a shudder. Each scene is twisted and funny, but there’s a definite lack of light and shade. The tone is always dark and she hollers everything out full-pelt, which becomes draining.

She also places great demands on her audience, getting them to read scripts is the least of it – her victims, chosen by sheer bullying intimidation, also have to dress up in preposterous costumes, ad lib and sing. Today’s performance featured a couple of very game sports, who made the show shine, but it would have been a very different story with anyone more reticent.

There’s also a lot of filth. Since Markham is a Jewish princess, she deserves her own fairy story. And in this one Prince Charming must travel the land to see whose ‘clunge’ will fit the discarded tampon. That’s one brief joke, but you have to steal yourself for a lot of crude humour, as she gets visceral, drops several ‘small dick’ jokes and sends the c-bombs flying in every direction. Then she has a baby, the sprog rendered in a disturbingly funny way.

While the energy is one-note, Markham’s singing is anything but, and she belts out the catchy numbers with the power of the most over-the-top Broadway diva. She’s got quite the voice on her.

‘I don’t know what have you got to do to get a bad review in this town,’ she shrieks after humble-bragging about her two four-starrers and before launching into the next scene of ribald depravity. ‘But I’m trying!’

Truth is, If I Had A Rich Man will provoke every reaction, from hating it to loving it – which probably defines the quintessential Fringe experience. For my part, I would have appreciated some more subtleties for the sake of texture, but you can’t fault her manic creativity and her intense execution. And it is definitely a show you’ll remember.

Review date: 20 Aug 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: The Hive