Andrea Spisto is rude, lewd, outspoken and exceptionally beautiful, but her genre-straddling show Butch Princesa is an acquired taste.
Described as a one-woman queer cabaret, we have comedy, music, rap, puppetry and audience dance, and while there are many good set pieces contained within, the show, as a whole, is garrulous, wandering, disjointed and lacks discipline or consistency. Certainly Spisto’s rap and spoken routines show considerable spark and originality, but don’t really relate to each other or the rest of the show, and, sadly, her puppetry needs more work. And, although the show purports to be a cabaret, it comes over as a mixed bag of odd ideas of inconsistent quality with no logical segues leading from one item to the next.
Spisto relies on heavily referential humour. Lines like ‘I just want to go to the Tait Modern’ get a big laugh from her young audience, but the comedy may be a generational thing. However, even allowing for the fact that all of us don’t get all of the host’s Harry Potter and Ibiza club culture references, there is still room for improvement here, and there is really no need for the tearful acknowledgements at the show’s conclusion. Everyone who brings an independent show to the Fringe makes sacrifices, sleeps on floors, and relies on the generosity of talented friends and colleagues to get their art to an Edinburgh audience. Acknowledge your debt of gratitude by all means, but don’t go on and on about it after an hour in a hot and airless tent.