Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

This feels like a showreel for LA-based Greta Titelman’s triple-threat talents. Actor – excellent; singer - for sure; and comedian – well, that one’s harder to ascertain.

Exquisite Lies is a romp through her life since the age of nine, full of frank admissions of all the mistakes she’s made. Or at least it feels like these are true autobiographical stories; the title inevitably sows seeds of doubt. If it  is fiction, she’s made a very convincing backstory for herself.

Assuming it’s true, however, and there’s humour in her candour. She’s got a good eye for honing in on the moments that will have the most impact, showing her at her lowest ebbs. And each time, another, lower, ebb will follow in short measure. 

We aren’t really taken on much of an emotional journey, however, as the show is very episodic. But she has the force of personality to sell these anecdotes hard, prowling the stage, bursting into a musical theatre-style song, or maintaining intense eye contact with someone on the front two as she overshares a story about her big teenage boobs. It’s a compelling cabaret of a performance.

Titelman was a show-off even as a child, wearing tap shoes to school just so she could make a noise in the corridors. And as her teenage years advance, she got overlooked at home as her parents were increasingly at each other’s throats. Who could possibly have foreseen that she would end up such an attention-seeker?

Her life story progresses through a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where she discovered cocaine, then later booze. That – and the unhealthy hangover food – made her pile on the pounds and shed the self-respect. 

Winding up with a man who had an essentially pro-rape poster above his bed was not a high point. In New York, she had a relationship with a man who was Wall Street rich, but not a match in any other way.

Three-quarters of an hour in, Titelman his us with the most serious moment, which seems inevitable given the established structures of solo shows. But here she plays it skilfully for laughs by emphasising her own melodramatic overreaction to the bad news. It’s probably the most overtly comic scene in the hour.

But then she snaps the narrative shut in a way she’d cleverly seeded earlier, but without providing a clear conclusion for her journey. 

Perhaps that is inevitable as it’s not clear how she is changing as a person through all these significant incidents. Obviously, all her wild escapades were ill-judged attempts to escape from unhappiness, but she just keeps repeating the same mistakes in different ways.

And while this isn’t the funniest show on the Fringe, Titelman is doing what her nine-year-old self would be very proud of, and making some goddamn noise.

k-l

Review date: 19 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard