Brighton Fringe comedy review

All but the most hardcore monarchists should stay away from this adoring tribute to the late Queen, performed on a memorabilia-strewn set and concluding with a paean to her life of decency and service.  

Carole Shaw – who performs in character as Her Late Majesty – almost can’t accept that her heroine is dead. Though it starts with the BBC’s announcement of the news (and a full chorus of the National Anthem), the show is set when Prince Phillip is still alive. However, its deferent sensibilities and mildest of humour date even further back.  Aside from one quip about Prince Andrew – which definitely underplays the severity of the accusations about him – the edgiest Shaw gets is joking about HM wearing big Union Jack pants.

The many songs she sings – and tries unsuccessfully to get the audience to join in with – are even more whiskered, such as the reworking of he 1910 music hall song I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am to fit Elizabeth.

But that cringe is nothing to her rewrite of Porgy and Bess, redubbed Corgi And Bess, which she does in the accents of the original characters which, if you don’t know, were poor black folk in the Deep South of America. Cringe doesn’t cover it when she sings about ‘lovin’ dem dogs’. (And if you think that’s culturally insensitive, wait till she refers to Arabs as having tea-towels on their heads – though you could generously argue that there she’s only reflecting the Queen’s colonialist mindset)

Lest you think she’s entirely stuck in the past, there’s a rap (using the term in its very loosest sense) with the refrain ‘Yo, yo Queenie’. Kanye it ain't

After a while, Shaw embarks on a contrived, convoluted story about the Monarch getting caught riding a motorbike without a licence, after which she goes into politics. Which is just an excuse for the performer to outline her own manifesto, entirely earnestly, from more funding into dementia, more pay for NHS staff and housing the homeless. Nothing too controversial (though her support for assisted dying might be).

More weirdly the character of the Queen outlaws second-class post and second-class rail travel arguing that there’s ‘no second-class citizens in my nation’. Which is exactly the opposite of what a hereditary monarchy and its layers of dukes, earls, lords, marchionesses and whatever else involves.

Maybe this is all too hard on a gentle performer who’s being sincere, clearly doing a show for the love of it, and who even hands out Battenberg cake to her audience. But this corgi’s dinner of a show is one only for the royalists who collect commemorative T-towels.

Oh, and Shakespeare doesn’t enter into it beyond a quote or two.

Review date: 30 May 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton The Walrus