Reviews Brighton Published 26 May 2017

Review: May-We-Go-Round? at Brighton Festival

May 25th Brighton Festival, touring to 6 July

Fizzing with wit and invention: Tracey Sinclair reviews The Hiccup Project’s performance at the Brighton Festival.

Tracey Sinclair
May-We-Go-Round? at the Brighton Festival.

May-We-Go-Round? at the Brighton Festival.

The Hiccup Project’s May-We-Go-Round? is a smart, funny look at love and female friendship served up in an energetic mix of comedy and dance against a backdrop of familiar songs.

An opening number by a quartet of dancers is entertaining and nicely done, and any show that kicks off with a lip sync to Heath Ledger’s 10 Things I Hate About You routine is always going to promise good things. But it’s when the central duo take charge that the piece is really lifted out of the ordinary.

Talented dancers and gifted comediennes, school-friends-turned-performance-partners Cristina MacKerron and Chess Dillon-Reams have the kind of chemistry that can’t be faked, and it’s this that lends the piece an authenticity and warmth that makes it so irresistible.

While purporting to be a trip down memory lane that revisits the pair’s various romances, from schoolyard crush to holiday fling to the kind of serious break up that leaves permanent scars, it’s also – more importantly – about women supporting one another through those times. Any woman who has ever got drunk with her mates and danced badly while singing loudly along to Spice Girls songs and cursing the day she ever met ‘that bastard’ will relate (or maybe that’s just me?).

Sometimes raucous, sometimes intimate, fizzing with wit and invention, it’s knowing and self-aware but also sincere and genuinely moving. It’s happy to gently mock its pop soundtrack (which is deployed with precision throughout) while being equally aware that there are times when you just need the unironic pleasures of a really catchy song. It’s an intimate, layered piece: you are not just watching the show, but watching the women perform it – listening to them worry that they look a bit red or sweaty, that their hair has gone funny or their make-up has smudged.

At one point, they decide to take a break for a quick vodka and cranberry juice  – ‘probably shouldn’t drink half way through a show, should we?’ they ask, gleefully conspiratorial, handing out drinks to the audience as they fumble through a costume change. It’s a moment typical of the production: irreverent, inclusive, a little bit cheeky but playing by their own rules, and all done such easy affability it’s impossible not to be charmed.

For more information on the Hiccup Project, click here.  

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Tracey Sinclair

Tracey Sinclair is a freelance editor and writer, a published author and performed playwright. She writes for a number of print and online magazines and most recently has focused on the Dark Dates series of books, including A Vampire in Edinburgh. You can follow her on Twitter under the profoundly misleading name @thriftygal

Review: May-We-Go-Round? at Brighton Festival Show Info


Directed by Chess Dillon-Reams and Cristina MacKerron

Choreography by Chess Dillon-Reams and Cristina MacKerron

Cast includes Cristina MacKerron, Chess Dillon-Reams, Zoe Williams, Ella Constable, Tiara Pillant and Asten Tolliday.

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