Holly Burn: I Am Special

Holly Burn used to be a star. She had talent, universal acclaim, a team of fixers and was chauffeured from party to party in her own personal Ford Mondeo. Granted, she was four at the time, but the intervening years have not lived up to her expectations.

Every adult used to be a child star – learning that you are not, in fact, the prettiest and the cleverest and the fastest runner is the most wrenching part of growing up. The astute joke at the centre of Holly Burn’s latest bout of mania is to collide precociousness with Hollywood glamour. 

Her anecdotes about her Thatcher-era childhood tend to spiral into surreal LA fairy tales: Elizabeth Taylor trapped in her mansion like a princess in a castle, Burn as the child destined to lead the kingdom of Bel Air.

You’re forgiven if you don’t get that immediately, as this is a smarter show than first appearances suggest. Burn combines a child’s physicality and need for attention with the exhausted disappointment of an adult – like Drew Barrymore was locked in a box and ignored after E.T., or like Miley Cyrus…is.

The hysteria takes some getting used to, and even as a rhythm develops and the audience warms up, Burn clearly enjoys keeping an air of tension. In fact, I Am Special’s ‘flaws’ are generally deliberate, a sure sign of an intelligent performer amusing herself, like a child putting on a show for her teddies.

It’s a show you enjoy much more in retrospect, but it’s certainly something special – a reminder that the Fringe is supposed to be experimental and hard to categorise, rather than bland and easy to swallow. Holly Burn is still big. It’s the Fringe that got small.