Cool Mccabe is full of warmth
Susie Mccabe: Femme Fatality
Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 27 August
JJJJ
There’s a lovely bit in Susie Mccabe’s show when she takes us to her teenage bedroom. There she’s scrunched up under a duvet, hoping to catch a bit of lesbian action on a television show. For the youngsters in the audience – and there are plenty – she explains that gay depictions on terrestrial TV were so rare in the 1980s, when she was growing up, that she can recount them, scene by disappointing scene.
She takes us back to her childhood and her upbringing partly to emphasise how much things have changed for the better. Mccabe is great at creating word pictures of people and situations. So we meet her diabetic dad and her dieting mum. And she introduces us to a cast of characters she met during her first career as an electrician on a building site.
There’s a tremendous warmth in the way she describes other people. In one very funny story, Susie helps a younger colleague buy a present for a girlfriend. She’s a generous friend and a loving daughter and you can see she’s an asset to any community. But that’s not to say there haven’t been struggles. Mccabe has always battled
with her body image – but as a public person she also has to negotiate the cruelty of people on social media.
She appears to be confident and in control – but like all of us she really isn’t – and she’s happy to own up to that. Mccabe relies a little too much on the easy laughs from associating lesbians with DIY, but to be fair she needs all the tricks in her toolbox to keep hold of a Friday night crowd who keep wandering in and out of the venue in search of the loo.
But she holds her audience close with stories of everyday life that everyone can relate to. And she ends on a message of hope that brings her warmth right into your heart. CLAIRE SMITH