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Degenerate

 
M Johnson Review by M Johnson 3 Published: 18 Aug 2025 Pleasance Courtyard Show Dates: 30 Jul 2025-23 Aug 2025

We file into our seats around a single woman, Maria Teresa Creasey, taped up and face down on the ground. We’ve had weirder weekends. I was expecting a jab that never came from Creasey about me being a little too comfortable with taking duct tape off women.

Creasey is a masterful MC of her own strange, satirical horror variety act

My role as a reviewer is often to make sense of what a show is like or about for our readers, but Degenerate actively resists the process of sense making. The show hops genres at milliseconds' notice – horror, drag-esque lip syncing, stream of consciousness, character comedy, stand-up, prop comedy, and tap dance. It somehow avoids feeling fractured through the sheer hutzpah of Creasey, who rolls us through the tonal whiplash.

The very loose storyline involves Creasey coming to terms with aging, as a woman and what that means regarding the roles she is now expected to play. What is Hollywood’s obsession with younger and younger women? In these flashes, Creasey speaks directly to me, as someone who has completely forgotten what age they are – I am post-30, and I stopped being an actor after becoming sick of constantly being asked to read for love interest, mother, or hag, and that’s it. Her response is to embrace the idea of an eternally young and sexy vampire.

The show has a shotgun approach to audience interaction. You might be able to avoid the blast by curling up really tight in the back, but everyone is getting hit at some point. Throughout the piece, Creasey talks to members of the audience as if they are fellow performers in the show or goes for more traditional stand-up crowd work.

The bits that worked least for me were the moments where Creasey imitated and lip synced along to extracts from women in horror films. Some of these were stronger than others. In good drag, it doesn’t matter that you’re lip syncing because you are also ascending or cracking jokes about the source material. Here, it felt these moments were played a bit too straight. They were a good chance for Creasey to flex her acting muscles, but they took chunks of time away from the fascinating performance surrounding them. I wanted more in the room than some quick references.

Creasey is a masterful MC of her own strange, satirical horror-variety act. I will keep the description light to avoid spoilers, but the finale is surprisingly affirming.

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The Blurb:

Following Summerhall Surgeries, a sold out WIP run at Vault Festival and featuring Maria Teresa Creasey (Ghostbusters, Loki, Silo, Dr. Who). Watch one woman's outrageous attempts to defy time, gravity and death. A laugh-out-loud, youth-obsessed fever dream with a finale so cathartic it’ll make you wonder if you should get bangs or start a cult or both. Think The Very Hungry Caterpillar meets David Lynch... sort of. Developed as part of Soho Theatre Labs. Praise for WIP: 'The Midsommar of stand-up' (HorrorObsessive.com). 'Creasey is undeniable' (TheatreFullStop.com). '[E]nergetic and endlessly witty.. .a whirlwind' (FringeBiscuit.com).