A teenage winner of Borehamwood’s Got Talent, Candy Gigi’s dreams of entertainment stardom have foundered: “The only role I’ve ever had is dried-up Jewish wife.” That’s the starting point for the outre almost-solo musical Friday Night Sinner!, which finds Gigi (or her fictional alter ego) on a crazed last bid for glory – to become, in her words, “the Jewish Barbra Streisand”. It’s not subtle, but as a showcase for Gigi’s bouffon talent and brass neck, and as a gleefully no-holds-barred hour of bad-taste comedy, it abundantly delivers.
She’s licking audience members’ faces within minutes of lights-up: this isn’t a show that respects boundaries. Whether dialoguing with her subconscious, represented by a giant puppet vulva, preparing the Shabbat meal, or wretching at the sight of her husband David (Jordan Paul Clarke, taciturn on piano), Gigi gives us a ravening will-to-fame warring with a religious culture that requires her to post her knickers monthly to the local rabbi. That asks her, in her mother’s words, to “learn to be happy being unhappy”. Sack off baby-making with dull David in a bid for showbiz glory? That would be, says mum, to “finish off what Hitler started”.
