Penelope – Underbelly Belly Button

Grace McLean’s hands deserve a review of their own.

In Penelope, they become almost another piece of stage machinery. A picture on a bedside table is conjured between her fingers, suddenly forming something resembling a tiny Grecian image. Later, as Penelope describes working at her loom, McLean’s hands weave invisible landscapes, seascapes and portraits in the air before methodically undoing them again.

It is mesmerising physical storytelling.

Penelope has promised that she will marry one of her suitors when her weaving is finished. Her solution is beautifully simple: create by day, unpick by night, and keep waiting for Odysseus.

And she has been waiting a very long time.

There is initially something almost Liza Minnelli-like about McLean’s performance, particularly when Penelope reveals that twenty years without a husband has encouraged a certain relationship with alcohol. McLean gives us a gloriously lush impersonation in one of the early numbers, funny, knowing and beautifully judged.

But there is considerably more beneath the cabaret surface.

McLean has a magnificent voice, while Alex Bechtel’s keyboards, Anna MacLean’s extraordinary cello work and Jonnie Grant’s drums turn this into something closer to an intimate chamber musical than a conventional one-woman show. The musicians aren’t merely accompaniment, they inhabit Penelope‘s world.

Eva Steinmetz’s direction understands the value of intimacy. In this small space McLean can hold us with the slightest movement. Beautifully lit, sometimes with the faintest blue cast, she can resemble a Greek statue suddenly brought to life.

There was one point, perhaps three quarters of the way through, where I felt the intensity dip slightly. Ten minutes shaved from the whole might make an already exceptional piece even tighter.

It hardly matters.

By the end, Penelope had completely won me over. The writing, acting, musicianship, lighting and sound are of extraordinarily high quality, and the time simply disappears.

The woman sitting beside me had the final word. When I mentioned my slight reservation, she immediately insisted that I still had to give it top marks.

She’s right.

For anyone who appreciates genuinely high-quality musical theatre, Penelope is a stone-cold recommendation of the highest order. Five stars? Absolutely. She’s urned them.

Playing until August 30th 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026PENELOP

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 19th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: