Lucinda Spragg: An Evening With. Rosemary Branch Theatre.

29 July 2022

Lucinda Spragg, the monstrous alt-right comedy character created by talented actor Grace Millie, has a simple message: “It’s not freedom of speech if I don’t say it.” And say it the character does, giving vent through 60-minutes of polemic, poetry, song, and readings from her anti-vaxxer best-seller to a range of increasingly splenetic and more or less demented right-wing tropes.

Spragg is, as so many real-life alt-right commentators are, thoughtless, tactless, and heavy-handed, with an inflated sense of her own self-worth and an aching desire for celebrity. Think a poor woman’s Katie Hopkins with a smidgeon of Alan Partridge and Milo Yiannopoulos thrown in.

Former pupil of Cheltenham Ladies College, but now valiant defender of England’s white working class Spragg is, in her own immodest opinion, “Freedom fighter, libertarian, thinker and philosopher.” Fan of Michael Gove, friend of Peers Corbyn, and foe of wishy-washy liberals Gary Lineker and Penny Mordaunt, her self-image is clearly evoked in the words of the Spandau Ballet song that accompanies her entrance – she is “Indestructible”.

Of course, if you want to expose bigotry through comedy you have to create some empathy with your character. The character’s unrequited ardour for Laurence Fox and poetry dedication to Michael Gove hint at a complex emotional void in her life. Her uncontrolled anger at having inconsistencies in her thinking challenged by a lame-stream Huffington Post reporter imply an inability to deal with criticism.

That aside, there is maddening little by way of backstory to explain quite how Spragg came to be the demon she is. A suggestion that a more enlightened younger version of herself once recognised the essential vacuity at the heart of extreme-right ideology, only to be pulled back into the comforting certainties of the conservative echo chamber, is never explored. As a result, the character feels, at times, decidedly one-dimensional.

There are some good comic lines, particularly in the readings from Spragg’s diatribe against ‘clot shots’, Jabbie Dodgers, a work she describes as more of a cornetto opus than magnum opus. The tone of the satire occasionally manages to skewer alt-right thinking, but mostly it is more like an intimate examination with the soft end of a cotton bud.

Millie has an interesting and funny comic creation on her hands here and the crowd the Camden Fringe venue certainly enjoyed the show. But there is some work to be done to really bring the character to life in the way she merits.

Writer and Performer: Grace Millie

Director: Kieran Dee

Duration: 60 Minutes. No interval.

This Review First Appeared in The Reviews Hub