Written by 
Tommy Lee and Sylvester Stallone live in Edinburgh. Sort of. Celebrity Autobiography.
Forgetting for a moment the stage presence, timing, and charisma of two faces we’re more used to seeing on Television, in Michael Urie [Twitter] (‘Ugly Betty’) and George Wendt [Twitter] (Norm in ‘Cheers’), the real revelation in this performance is when the ensemble gather on stage and lead off with comically mismatched accounts of the same events from the autobiographies of Debbie Reynolds and Liz Taylor.
Suddenly, there is the sound of ‘giggling’ between Taylor (Tiffany Stephenson) and Burton (James Lance) and with the subtle exchanges of glances, wry facial expressions and tiny elements of body language, all at once, you have Taylor and Burton live on stage. They’re just there.
It’s a clue to why this show has enjoyed so much success, running for three years in New York, winning a Drama Desk award last year, and having featured the likes of Matthew Broderick within its line-up. A London West End run is probably inevitable later in the year – this will be a huge hit in Edinburgh.
The structure of ‘Celebrity Autobiography’ is frighteningly simple: an ensemble of actors perform from the verbatim autobiographic memoirs of a wide range of celebrities. And inevitably, with a little judicious selection and editing, many of these celebrities are hoist by their own petard, displaying their aching self-importance, pretentiousness, vacuousness, stupidity, vanity, downright weirdness and simple stupidity…
- Sylvester Stallone asks if we have talked to our muscles lately. I mean really talked.
- Mr T of A-Team fame stuns us by learning 7 pages of dialogue in just three days. And then ad-libbed!
- Tommy Lee reveals his tips for the best oral sex performance when you ‘go south on a lady’. Get some air in there.
- David Cassidy fails to have sex with his TV sister because she’s not slutty enough. But what the hell, he woke up with an erection anyway.
- Diana Ross fails to stop the rain and has a wet dream without even being consulted. And explains how she almost had to leave Central Park on foot!
- Tiger Woods shows us his ‘putting’ technique step-by-step, loose left hand and rigid thumbs included. And to think, until the age of 20, like most young guys, he though every ‘putt’ was a good one.
Celebrity AUtobiography is a show that makes you laugh. And laugh a lot. And the performances are far more than ‘readings’. The staging is sparse and simple, but this allows you to focus on the dialogue, and, whether it’s one actor, a pair, or a group interacting on stage, you can really savour the pauses, sidelong glances, smiles, occasional looks of horror and the delicious, almost unbelievable awfulness of the material being aired. You really can’t make this stuff up – it’s priceless.
I’d go to see this again, in an instant. I suspect this will sell out fast, so I recommend you get your seats booked, bring a friend, remember to grab a drink to enjoy during the show, and perhaps you’ll want to add a few autobiographies to your reading list afterwards.
David Petherick ||| @clarocada
Celebrity Autobiography
19:25 05-Aug to 30-Aug
Udderbelly’s Pasture, Bristo Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL
Box office: 08445 458252
Website: www.underbelly.co.uk
