Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

A modern musical about a historic US political figure? I can’t see that ever catching on…

Ellie MacPherson is a huge Abraham Lincoln buff, identifying herself as a boomer in spirit because of how many biographies she’s devoured. She’s also a very silly goose with a good set of lungs, so she has combined her talents and interests for this fun and informative cabaret show about her American hero.

She enters the stage on stilts to bring herself up to Honest Abe’s 6ft 4in stature and promises a story of struggle, sexuality and mental health. ‘Kinda like Nanette,’ she says. ‘But with more people who poop themselves to death.’

The story – which more-or-less stops before Lincoln gets into national politics – is genuinely fascinating as we hear how he was born into a frontier life that ill-suited his sensitive soul and then struggled to find his place in the world. His early loves, failed business ventures, and very unusual living arrangements will be news to British ears, and probably most Americans’ too, while the story racks up more corpses than a Tarantino film, given the shocking mortality rates in the mid-19th Century.

Each little bit of the story is tagged with an appropriate – or more likely inappropriate – bit of song. After hearing that Lincoln’s mother Nancy died from drinking toxic milk when he was just nine, what else will we hear but Kelis’s Milkshake? When he’s struggling with suicidal thoughts, it’s The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, playing into an image of the future President as an introspective emo boy.

MacPherson belts out the numbers, paired with some silly physical comedy. If you’ve ever wanted to see a woman in dollar-store fake beard and stovepipe hat twerking, you’ve come to the right place. And there’s a spot of burlesque too… The Gettysburg UNdress, amirite?

However the format does run out of steam before the hour’s up. While there is a pop song for every occasion, and the segues are always apt, the pattern of fact/cover version snippet becomes repetitive, however strong the elements. The occasional wanders off-topic, for example, to consider whether Abe would have been vegetarian if around today, make things worse, not better.

But a bit of audience participation ends things on a high… although not for Lincoln himself, if that’s not too much of a spoiler.
 

Review date: 24 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard