Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Marking her welcome return to the Fringe after six years, it's not hyperbole to call Lunartic a classic Lucy Pearman show. Filled with winsome prop and costume-based silliness, music and some delightfully childish wrangling of the crowd, this early afternoon hour feels as if she's stripped her act down to those clownish essentials with which she first broke through.

Focusing on a single character, The Moon, it helps that the show is so thematically strong. Quite apart from all the songs that the celestial body has inspired, Pearman's costume is a large, reflective silver disc that draws the light, cumbersome enough for her to require help getting on and off the stage and requiring occasional straightening out. You wouldn't call her graceful exactly, with Pearman willing to suffer considerable indignity. But you probably wouldn't be as tactless as Dr Brian Cox has been about her.

Not a cheerful idiot like the Mighty Boosh's portrayal of the Moon, existing over, above and outside human affairs, Pearman's version is feminine, avowedly lonely and seeks interaction, amiable but prone to snapping, her mood waxing and waning a little with the tides. She's persecuted by the bullying Sun, who's upset that she's trying to steal some focus during the day.

Whether inspired or groan-worthy, and often both, the lunar theme inspires a succession of puns, with Pearman acknowledging how far she's stretching the conceit when she extends it to incorporate the entire solar system. Uranus is right there after all, difficult to ignore. The galaxy also serves as a recruitment drive to inveigle others into her nonsense, to play the fellow objects in her orbit.

If you were to scrutinise really hard through Pearman's clumsy, extendable telescope, you may find the merest traces of feminist comment and reflection on climate change. But that's very much playing distant fiddle to the Moon bringing a nursery rhyme to realisation. 

Disparate elements come together in a manner that's both ridiculously contrived and yet plays out charmingly, Pearman having laid the groundwork with her attentive crowd entreaties, singalongs and consensual tactility.

The Moon is isolated, underappreciated and in the Sun's metaphorical shadow. But notwithstanding a weirdly maternal-cum-sexual bit involving an alien's tongue, there's actually less madness in the character than many of Pearman's other creations, with her efforts to bridge the void of space and to shine relatably human.

Relative to her previous work of course. You'll likely acknowledge the show's more lunatic elements as she strafes the seating with a child's giant toy.

Forever playfully teasing, with some really joyous interludes and daftness in abundance, Lunartic is a small step for womankind that'll leave you returning to Earth with overwhelming positivity.

Review date: 19 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire)