Review: Oral Tradition, Fringe 2024

If you were brought up on fairytales, you’d love the lips as red as blood-soaked snow and a heart as dark as a raven wing that features in this bard’s glorious tale of Iron Age Ulster – before Jesus and pals wrote stuff down and ruined everything. A time when mighty women ruled the land, for they were mightiest!

And so is Dr Lara McClure, the incredible storyteller that weaves a tale so magnificent it might cause your ears to stop hearing. So I’ve heard…

With a huge array of talent and a gazillion shows to see at the Fringe – you absolutely grip tight to any personal recommendations at all, so this show, Oral Tradition was sold to me by my pal who had a friend of a friend whose friend was starring in this. When I read the show’s tagline: ‘Ancient Ulsterwomen used sex as a weapon, and they made plenty of noise about it!’ I was like, yep that’ll do me lads. And that these women ‘understood that the possibility of a decent shag was a great motivator, and gamed it accordingly.’ RIGHT up my street!

First of all, the venue, Greenside on George Street, was fab with lego tables so you could ‘be busy doing lego’ if the chat got boring. Lucky for me, Dr Lara’s friend who knew my pal’s, pal’s other pal, was actually very unboring! So I didn’t need the lego – and the bar staff were absolutely Lovely and accommodated my penchant for tequila and Rio while complimenting my hat. YES! Bonus! This night had already been worth the ticket price!

When we were ushered in to the very hot and very intimate theatre a beautiful punky Irish lady with a hypnotic voice was offering us mints in exactly the way cabin crew used to offer you sweets to stop your ears popping on the plane – oh those were the days, THOSE WERE THE DAYS! She knew how to win over a crowd all right. And so, I’m already absolutely wild with a mint in my mouth and it’s so hot in the theatre I wonder if it’s been dipped in acid and we’re about to go tripping. You’re not supposed to take sweets from strangers… but this lady is a Doctor. Dr Lara McClure no less.

Dr Lara has sublime, composed and compelling stage presence. I could not keep my eyes off her. Calm, soothing and so eloquent. A super clever woman and I felt very smug when I got her joke about buying a fan to cool the illegally hot room, ‘if only there was a site dedicated to buying these fans’ wahayyyy yes, I can keep up with this!

Then we get into the real tale telling, the story weaving and we’re drawn back to the Iron Age when women were queens and literally anyone could be a king, you just had to say so. We are introduced to three mighty women, Ness, Medb (I looked that up as I was sure she’d said Maeve…) and Diedre.

Ness wanted to spread her lineage and managed to shag an all-knowing druid, it may not have been consensual… Medb was in competition with her husband and whatever he could do she could do seven million times better. In the history of oral tradition, exaggerating the good bits and leaving out the meh bits are what makes the bardiest of bards and Dr Lara is no exception.

Stand out moments apart from the mints at the start were Dr L showing us how the ancients made their sexual intentions known to their prospective lovers… they went right up to their intended and massaged their earlobes. A uniquely dominant and intimate act which Dr L performed twice on lucky audience members. (Unlike our Ness, the good Dr gained consent before going ahead.) I was sad to be in the back row I’m telling you.

Dr Lara combines beautiful elegant movement with her magnetic and lovely voice, with the perfect sibilance on those S notes, she’s definitely a descendant of a magical thing for sure. Even during her impression of Medb angrily shagging her husband in a duel-like clash of combatants that would make a UFC card go wild, you still felt like, this, THIS is classy. OK?

When it was all over and the the Dr took her bow, I felt like I had been under a spell spun by an ethereal being from another world, which I suppose Ireland is in a way. Or maybe those mints were spiked after all…