Dancing on to the stage, presenting her breasts proudly in her green gingham dress to upbeat 90s pop music, the carnival that is Helen Bauer has begun – jump on, strap in, and hang on for dear life. The confidence and energy of this woman is a true treat to behold.
There’s a boisterous delight about Helen Bauer. Like being savagely battered around the head with a dozen red party balloons, that leaves an audience gasping for breath with cheeks puffed up and thick from laughter.
Bauer is a self-declared ‘leading lady’, and it’s a delight. To be unapologetically the star of her own life and raucously funny, loud, not always fitting into a world of delicate coy flowers – Bauer’s shouted punchlines are the welcome assault you never knew you wanted to hit you between the eyes.
Starting and continuing with joyful energy, she has a connection with her audience that never waivers. She’s brash and bold and takes up all of the space she has with her fun electricity. No subject is off limits and anything can happen. There’s a roaring strength she emanates when claiming all the labels she can, like other people might hoard Pokemon cards– basic, fat, goth, athletic, international. It’s pure delight she’s showing in being her body-positive fully present self. And as much as it might feel as if you are simply being caught up along in the wake of the power of her personality, step out of the slipstream and you’ll see an expertly written and constructed show toying with tension and release, with the full power of her physicality behind every bit of delivery.
As much as this is a celebration of Bauer, laying herself bare and oversharing with gymnastic verbal pirouettes as punchlines, it’s not an idolisation of her. There’s a conspiratorial element that mines laughter from heartbreak and screeching schadenfreude.
Bauer is a larger than life character, and it would seem she has always been this way. And thank goodness for that, if this show is anything to go by. Let her grab you by the collar and drag you along for one hell of a ride.
Helen Bauer – Madam Good Tit
Pleasance Courtyard, 3-28 (except 17th) August 2022
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=%22Helen%20Bauer%3A%20Madam%20Good%20Tit%22
