EDINBURGH 2023: Review: SUSIE MCCABE: FEMME FATALITY, Assembly George Square Studios

Growing up, Susie McCabe didn’t see people like her on TV. There were little to no gender non-conforming lesbians in the media, and certainly not working-class Glaswegian ones. Not living up to the expectations society set for her at birth, or what she thought her parents expected in a daughter, she knew she was different from an early age.

Femme Fatality talks about that initial sense of failure, the search for representation, and ultimately of self-discovery and self-acceptance wrapped, of course, in the typically sharp and self-deprecating Glaswegian humour McCabe is known for.   

Femme Fatality is never really a critique of the gendered expectations placed on women in society. It is the story of how she’s lived outside of these, uncomfortably at times, and how she tried to find her place whilst running parallel to them. McCabe pokes fun at herself more than she does society’s expectation of gender conformity with her natural ability to make the most mundane activities uproariously funny.

There are some elements of social commentary sprinkled throughout; how bad body image is hereditary and contagious, passed down from mother to daughter like a sad poor self-esteem heirloom. How men’s changing expectations have altered family dynamics and made modern men obsessed with facial hair and kitchen appliances (yet somehow less adept at DIY) in the process.

Some of the punchlines land better than others, thriving more in the grounded content than when chasing after the crude humour laugh, but there’s never a single moment where nobody is laughing (with the small exception of when the Red Arrows flew overhead and everyone in the room momentarily thought the end of humanity had come).

Far from being emotional, Femme Fatality feels like a celebration from its opening to its end. It stirs the crowd to life immediately with its party-esque opening, the applause and cheers so rowdy that even McCabe herself needs to take a moment to recover from it.

Her humour is laid back and easy going, so the true sense of what she went through as a child – raised in a Catholic family during the homophobia of the 1980s and 1990s, under the shadow of Section 28 – as she came to terms with her sexuality is never felt acutely. She makes moments from her past that were clearly difficult to look back on seem like funny anecdotes. The audience goes wild again and again, and she banters with them easily, her command of the stage casually confident. It feels less like an hour of stand up and more like an event; her performance provoking a sense of revelry from the audience.

Femme Fatality is a larger-than-life hour of stand-up that guarantees non-stop laughs from start to finish, with McCabe’s witty dry humour making comedy look as easy as putting up a shelf (just don’t ask a man to do it).

Femme Fatality runs Aug 15-27 at Assembly George Square Studios.

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