This year’s Edinburgh Festival is filled with all things weird and wonderful. But while Michelle Collins grabs the headlines as Motorhome Marilyn (see here), another fringe show also draws upon the Monroe myths. Chickadee is playing at Zoo Southside until August 24.
“Chickadee is a one-woman show that takes us on a ride into the mind of a female street clown named Dahlia. In a world filled with suffering, she has one desire: to bring joy and connection into people’s lives. One day, she is pushed into performing in a live TV show at Chickadee Night Live and becomes famous and viral overnight as ‘Chickadee the Sexy Clown.’
Suddenly celebrated for her sex appeal rather than her art, Dahlia’s sense of self and mental health begin to unravel. An inner war ignites between ego and soul. Chickadee offers us an entry ticket to Dahlia’s chaotic childhood, the roots of her clowning, and the struggle to navigate life with a pure heart in a world obsessed with power and appearances. A poetic clash between pop culture and the art of clowning.”
“A Marilyn Monroe lookalike stands on a stage singing Happy Birthday, the song Monroe sang to President Kennedy in 1962, wearing a dress that looks like the one she immortalised in The Seven Year Itch. 8 years earlier. But this time, the merging of the two classic images is added to by Marilyn also wearing a red nose.
The opening scene of Chickadee, written and performed by Feride Morçay, is an intriguing prelude … Morçay combines innocence and wide-eyed excitement with confusion and a sense of loss as the clown persona is stripped away from her and she is transformed into something she doesn’t want to be.
The show draws you in and provides a message that builds on, and goes beyond, the Marilyn myth, asking wider questions about identity, the loss of the inner clown and the need to hang on to it in a world that expects people to conform to stereotypes and sees success more in terms of money than happiness.”
– Tom Ralphs, The Reviews Hub
The Marilyn Report 