The Girl Who Thought She was Irish
THEATRE
The Girl Who Thought She Was Irish
Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14)
2 stars **
THERE’S AN OVERLOAD of charm in Biddy O’Loughlin’s solo memoir of her early life as a girl brought up in Alice Springs believing she was Irish, who then sets out to discover Ireland for herself. She’s young, she’s funny, she’s sparklingly beautiful, she sings her own sweet songs to her own guitar, she talks dirty on occasions, and she delivers a mean bit of Irish step-dancing; she also talks very frankly about the experience of being raised by a mother with a drink problem, also delivering her own solo show on the Fringe.
What it all amounts to, though, is harder to say. There’s an important theme here, about the national identity of those who make their lives in one place, while clinging to the idea that they belong to another. But Biddy has too much to say about love, life, drink and being young to focus clearly on the subject in hand; so what we get is a sweet, seductive hour of nothing much at all.
Joyce McMillan
Until 24 August
p.266
Joyce McMillan is theatre critic of 
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