Review: Andrea Spisto – Miss Venezuela

A dance revolution that's light on laughs

★★
comedy review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 04 Aug 2018
33332 large
100487 original

Our own political future hangs precariously in the balance. So, you might have missed the horrifying events unfolding in Venezuela over the last few years where spiralling inflation, riots and a rapidly rising murder rate has seen people emigrate in record numbers. This dire state of affairs jars with the view of this beautiful South American country portrayed by their many winners of Miss Universe and Miss World beauty paegants. In Andrea Spisto's clowning comedy show she attempts to make these links via interpretive dance and a dream board full of South American idols. She just falls short of making the links she desperately scrambles for.

Spisto attempts to invert the beauty queen aesthetic people associate with a country in turmoil. She touches on Venezuela's treatment of LGBTQ+ people via a series of dance routines that only lead to confusion. Her asides about the heroes on her shrine to South American idols are so under-written that she asks her audience to google one of them. Spisto ends the piece by explaining what she had been trying to say, which feels like a drama student's summation of a point the work clearly didn't get across. A shame, because what she may have to say could hold more weight if it wasn't hidden behind gyrating to Latin power pop and serenading an electric fan.