I first saw Fancy Chance many moons ago at a burlesque night in Leeds. She did her infamous Prince and Uhuru and I was blown away. It was, by a million miles, the best cabaret I had ever seen. Fancy holds the titles of Alternative Miss World and Britain’s Top Tranny and rightly so. Her various acts give us comedy, sex, and even acrobatics. She is a star.

Her latest show, Flights of Fancy, takes us in another direction: that of autobiography and social comment. The personal and the political has been a thread through fringe performance for many decades and it is a welcome component of the current, very strong, wave of queer theatre. Fancy – Veronica Thompson – takes us on a journey through her own narrative of race, nationality, queerness and the escape and activism of performance. This is a show about identity, how you are seen by others (usually in a very wrong way) and how we make sense of ourselves.

Veronica Thompson is hilarious, but we knew that. Flights of Fancy also gives us a raw exposure of self that is emboldened and fierce. The show uses music in a wonderful way and as well as showcasing her awesome voice, the choice of numbers offers a centre to her narrative. It was – for me – the best part of the show.

Flights of Fancy feels like a work in progress. I was left wanting more and I wonder if it is because the show is only an hour, so what more can you do with that when you are talking about something so profound as yourself? It may be that we are on a whistle stop tour of Veronica because of the brevity of the show. If so, I either want more (more time, a longer show) or for what we’re given to be more in depth. As vital as social commentary about regeneration and gentrification is right now and I don’t doubt that this is a vital concern for her politically, I’d rather know more about her queer political self of the past and present and get more context for how we as marginalized people thrive in these oppressive instances. We all know – I assume – that London is becoming a gentrified, sterile hellhole that we can no longer afford… so what do we do? The answer is most probably in the survival techniques that we as queer artists and activists learn just to get through our everyday lives. I kind of wanted more of that. More of how we can translate living in a hostile world that misunderstands and marginalizes us into a collective uprising. That’s what I assumed she was calling for at the end of her show but I didn’t feel like we were offered anywhere in particular to go.

Flights of Fancy has the bones of something exceptional and it is because of the exceptional talent and woman at its centre. I hope we get more of this Fancy Chance in the future.

Review by Fallon Gold

Catch Flights of Fancy at Latitude 13-16 July and The Marlborough, Brighton 15-16 September.

Image by Sin Bozkurt