Review > Theatre review: Catwalk Confidential
LOADS of people come to the Edinburgh Fringe to tell their life stories, but few have a story as fascinating as Robyn Peterson’s.
ASSEMBLY@ ASSEMBLY HALL (VENUE 35)
A teenage runaway who was discovered in New York and went on to become a top catwalk model in Paris, Peterson posed for Helmut Newton, insulted Yves St Laurent and stole a show-stopping bikini from Karl Lagerfield’s muse.
She tell us how Grace Jones taught her how to do a ballet turn and that she got the best-ever tip about how to keep her thighs svelte from bad-girl über-model Janice Dickinson.
Peterson’s story takes us from the gin palaces of Miami Beach to New York, Marrakech, Paris and the pages of Vogue. And she is happy to spill the beans on the dark side of the modelling industry – including the drugs, eating disorders and the casting couch.
But it isn’t just the story of Peterson’s life which makes this such a compelling piece of drama. Peterson has a mesmerising stage presence, whether she is impersonating her world-weary divorcée mother, her teenage self, her English photographer husband or the world-famous cast of characters she met on the Paris catwalk.
Her writing is evocative, rich in insight and sparkles with wit – as well as being disarmingly honest. And Peterson draws on the concentration and shape-shifting ability she learned on the catwalk to create a remarkable performance in which she appears to transform into different characters and to grow younger and older before our eyes.
She begins her own life story as a dizzy teenager kicking her legs in the air, then takes us through sexual initiation, womanhood and finally metamorphoses into a great beauty who is on the brink of losing her supremacy.
The actress is uncompromising in showing her own rise and fall – from hungry, opportunistic wannabe to a whacked-out model who knows her career is nearly at an end. She shows us how great beauty brings great power – but also shines a light on the terrible pain of knowing that beauty is beginning to fade.
The story has deliberate echoes of All About Eve – the classic Bette Davis film about the ambitious young starlet who triumphs only to be transplanted at the height of her fame. Whether or not you are fascinated by fashion you will be captivated by Peterson’s performance and her powers as a writer and storyteller. If, like me, you are a devotee of the fascinatingly trashy television show America’s Next Top Model you’ll be in supermodel heaven.
Until 30 August. Today 6:20pm.
