Eurovision fans rejoice. This charming, gallic inspired real-life tale of affection, addiction and adoration is presented in Maxwell’s trademark playful style featuring song, dance and storytelling.
Nan, Me & Barbara Pravi follows Hannah as she moves back to the Home Counties in 2021 to care for her recently bereaved grandmother. Really though, it’s about France’s Eurovision star Barbara Pravi who Maxwell thinks is just lovely. In between cooking, cleaning and Countdown, Maxwell escapes into an intensifying fantasy of ballroom dances, heartfelt ballads, fluent French and definitely-not-creepy plots to engineer a meet-cute with her random foreign celebrity crush. It’s La La Land meets Mission Impossible meets Hannah’s nan. Sacre Bleu!
Hannah Maxwell, writer and performer, Nan, Me & Barbara Pravi said: “Anyone else feel like they’ve had a weird few years? This show isn’t even half of it. It’s a performed portrait of life taking strange turns, the hilarious and unfathomable places we can find ourselves mentally, and what it takes to realise you’re not quite as okay as you thought you were.
“My work often focuses on family, super-specific personal journeys and mundane corners of middle England. This piece has all of that again, but the emotional stakes are a hell of a lot higher than my last show. It touches on bereavement, care, ageing, mental health, loneliness, substance abuse and addiction recovery. Somehow it finds time to be very silly as well, with Fred Astaire-esque dances with a mop, huge pill boxes, playing Countdown with the audience, and some Graham Norton commentary.
“It was very special to create part of the performance with my nan, Angela. Much of the piece is in dialogue with her voiceover, and she plays herself with remarkable authenticity.
I’m hoping this show does well in Edinburgh, so that I can raise my profile, gain some more followers, and then maybe Barbara Pravi will start responding to my emails.”
