IN MID-WEST burlesque, Madonna Lucia is legend. Bould, blonde, bodacious and gifted with visceral wit, Madonna Lucia has entertained the LGBT and other communities on many a platform. Step forward her creator, Evan Kennedy, a longtime married Limerick man with a career entirely other than the stage.
For Limerick Fringe April 3 to 6, his alter ego Madge presents her, and his, new ‘Holy + Show’. Evan Kennedy makes the point to Limerick Post that a year ago he would have been arrested for staging it. “Now, the Blasphemy law is gone and I am dressed in nun’s garb.”
Find him at The Record Room, Catherine Street, April 4 to 6 at www.limerickfringe.com
As writer, he is at pains to underline that ‘Holy + Show’ is far from a venting tirade of obscenity and clamour. For the inaugural Fringe he created ‘Not Safe at Work’, a pun on #NSFW tagged to material circulated that you do not want to open on workplace systems.
“‘Holy + Show’ for me is really, in a nutshell, about freedom of speech.” He regrets how fierce PC policing has become, “and the encroachment of the Internet into our language. It’s about how restrictions on language are affecting our thinking. There’s no nuance in life anymore. We have become like America, black and white in our thinking whereas life is 99 per cent grey.”
He describes the format to this personal and revealing hour of theatre stand-up as taking “bits from pop culture, from social media and stuff from the #metoo movements.”
Madonna Lucia journeys back through Catholic schooldays. She explores the concept of separating the artist from their art, such as the Michael Jackson controversy. “There’s left-of-field stuff too, sexual experiences that I have had, and spam. We changed our Internet provider recently and oh, boy, the spam!” Fearlessly entertaining, book at limerickfringe.com
