Review by Cody Fullbrook
Lucy Peach, sexual health educator and musician presents My Greatest Period Ever, being performed in The Hat Trick tent at the Pleasure Garden. Accompanied by delightfully comic drawings, projected onto a semi-transparent screen, Lucy Peach, dressed in a spunky, pragmatic, and appropriately crimson jumpsuit, details the stages and emotional rollercoaster of every lady’s period.
Even while describing the stages of the menstrual cycle, My Greatest Period Ever is definitely not a biology lesson. Rather, it’s used as a jumping-off point to discuss comedic and relatable moments in life, and despite what the majority female audience would have you believe; the show is surprisingly accessible (Who doesn’t love a good “My wife takes up too much room in bed” joke?). With songs, dancing, and child-focused audience participation, My Greatest Period Ever is completely un-sexual, especially compared to what a snarky female shock comedian could have done with the material.
Despite a rather intimate retelling of Lucy’s first period at age twelve, the show never becomes a collection of wholesome stories of her life, but more pseudo-standup peppered with songs and cooky visuals. While Lucy Peach is a great singer, with a clearly emotional and delicate tone, the music came off as a blunt attempt to mix up the format, as if she assumed the audience would get bored by her talking without transitioning into vaguely related songs. Though the finale number was heart meltingly saccharine, though it was helped by the child participants.
The projected images are not just done live, but are drawn on stage by Lucy’s quiet and therefore needlessly microphone-d husband. Even with the UI of the program inevitably bleeding into the projector’s frame, it adds a bespoke charm to the show, getting most of the laughs and often becoming the star of the show. Though, like the songs, their infrequent utility made them feel more like a haphazard auxiliary, rather than being intrinsic or even necessary. I can only recall three moments in which Lucy performed “with” the drawings, with the most creative segment of the entire performance being literally the very start, with Lucy sitting behind the screen as the shadow placed her head into the window seat of a plane being drawn around her. After that, 90% of the runtime is Lucy standing stage left, delivering what is essentially a Ted Talk about womanhood.
The audience was slow to win over, with a rather embarrassing moment where Lucy mistook noise from the crowd for someone asking a question, leaving her in uninterested silence. But by the halfway point, practically every audience member followed along ever beat when prompted, and audience members joining her on stage with complete comfort and obvious delight.
My Greatest Period Ever may be a bit too “Kumbaya” for some audiences, but if you’re in the mood for a charming, undemanding, show, it’s a perfect fit. A show I can truly (and shockingly) call “For All Ages”. Much like a period itself, you may not like parts of it, but when it’s over, it felt important.
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