There are many urgent topics demanding our attention on the fringe. Having a famous brother is not high among them. Yet that, initially at least, is the primary hang-up of Lucie Barât.
Many of us would be delighted to see our siblings prosper, but she was too preoccupied with her own bumpy career to be anything but envious when her kid brother hit the big time. He is Carl Barât of the Libertines, who seemed to go overnight from borrowing her guitar to being a music-paper darling.
Perhaps we should leave aside the impression that the average Traverse audience member knows more about the Second Earl of Rochester, the Marquis de Sade and fellow libertines than they do about Pete Doherty. There is something odd about a celebrity memoir that has to begin with the performer explaining who the celebrity is.
The bigger problem is that, aside from one or two backstage recollections about the band, her story is so familiar. Having trained as an actor, she graduates with an exaggerated sense of her own worth and is soon working in restaurants. Like every other actor, she skips shifts to audition, goes for demeaning jobs and performs badly in front of the casting director. And like every other actor, she winds up in poorly attended fringe productions of plays by Oscar Wilde.
Even when she gets serious with her sorry tale of addiction, the material is unsurprising. She resists rehab, rolls her eyes at group therapy and spends years getting clean. Clearly, it was a struggle, but there is little to distinguish her experience from any other addict’s memoir.
Perhaps sensing the show could do with some more bite, she tries to link her increasing self-awareness with the challenge of sexual acceptance in society at large. It is not enough to elevate a pleasant, but inward-looking show.
-
At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 24 August
-
All our Edinburgh festival reviews
