Latest news with #LucieBarât
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Standing in the Shadows of Giants review – Lucie Barât looks back at spiral during Libertines' rise
There are many urgent topics demanding our attention on the fringe. Having a famous brother is not high among them. Yet that, initially at least, is the primary hang-up of Lucie Barât. Many of us would be delighted to see our siblings prosper, but she was too preoccupied with her own bumpy career to be anything but envious when her kid brother hit the big time. He is Carl Barât of the Libertines, who seemed to go overnight from borrowing her guitar to being a music-paper darling. Perhaps we should leave aside the impression that the average Traverse audience member knows more about the Second Earl of Rochester, the Marquis de Sade and fellow libertines than they do about Pete Doherty. There is something odd about a celebrity memoir that has to begin with the performer explaining who the celebrity is. The bigger problem is that, aside from one or two backstage recollections about the band, her story is so familiar. Having trained as an actor, she graduates with an exaggerated sense of her own worth and is soon working in restaurants. Like every other actor, she skips shifts to audition, goes for demeaning jobs and performs badly in front of the casting director. And like every other actor, she winds up in poorly attended fringe productions of plays by Oscar Wilde. Even when she gets serious with her sorry tale of addiction, the material is unsurprising. She resists rehab, rolls her eyes at group therapy and spends years getting clean. Clearly, it was a struggle, but there is little to distinguish her experience from any other addict's memoir. Perhaps sensing the show could do with some more bite, she tries to link her increasing self-awareness with the challenge of sexual acceptance in society at large. It is not enough to elevate a pleasant, but inward-looking show. At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 24 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
Scotsman
26-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Life with the Libertines: Carl Barat's big sister tells her story at the Edinburgh Fringe
For years Lucie Barât lived in the shadow of her famous brother. Now she's the headline act as she shares her story in a new theatre show Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Lucie Barât grew up on a council estate in Basingstoke. She also grew up in New Age traveller camps and communes. The duality of her upbringing led on to a plurality of professions - acting, writing, performance poetry, publishing, singing - for this self-declared 'artistic Del Boy'. Lucie Barât, older sister of The Libertines Carl Barât, is telling her story in Standing In The Shadows Of Giants | Traverse Theatre But if you think the name sounds vaguely familiar it is likely that you are thinking of her younger brother Carl, co-frontman of The Libertines, one of the most ardently adored bands of the 21st century. Thanks to his notoriety, Lucie's best known role in adulthood has been as 'Carl Barât's sister'. And yet…. 'I was the golden girl who won this scholarship to drama school,' says Barât the elder, 'and he was the black sheep getting into trouble.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It's such a germane summation of affairs that she has used the line in her new autobiographical show, Standing in the Shadows of Giants, in which she gets to grips with her helter skelter existence, both personal and career-wise, her addictions, her sexuality, her experiences of misogyny in the arts and especially her siblings-on-steroids relationship with Carl. 'We ended up living together just after I graduated drama school,' she recalls. 'He dropped out of uni just after he started this band and he went up and I went down for lots of reasons. It's like a sibling love story of us dovetailing and coming back together and the pressures of where we gauge our success to be, the feelings of personal failure, everything it felt to have a little brother that overtook you to superstardom and the way that these young boys were held up and lauded by middle-aged music execs and stalked by celebrity cougars. The Libertines, including Lucie Barât's brother Carl, second from left. 'It was a fairly insane moment in time and throughout all of that I was having my own crumble. I was in the middle of these iconic figures and moments and instead of embracing it and thinking 'I'm at the centre of the universe', I felt I didn't belong here and was breaking inside. And then I go off to rehab. It's quite candid and confessional.' But in a funny way, and with songs. Director Bryony Shanahan is in full agreement. 'This one bares its heart clearly,' she says. 'The writing voice is very warm and funny so it leapt off the page. It struck me that the story is both incredibly relatable and totally extraordinary all at once. We all go through a coming of age where we're trying to work out who we are and there's probably a bumpy path anyway but for you to go through that in the pressure cooker that unfolded with your brother creates a pretty extraordinary experience.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Lucie Barat's Edinburgh Fringe show tells the story of her relationship with rock band the Libertines. | Corinne Cumming Growing up, it was Lucie and Carl versus the rest of the world. Their parents split - hence the wildly contrasting joint custody existence - then found new partners and had more kids. 'So our attachments were to each other rather than to a parent,' says Barât. 'We would fight as kids but we were also mates. Then I left home and thought 'I'm my own person' and he would just turn up to my work and I'd be like 'this is so embarrassing'. We were either absolutely inseparable or just taking it out on each other because the only people that could understand this confusing environment we'd been in was each other.' As the older sister, Barât was the first to jump, attending drama school in the late 1990s, graduating and promptly making her way to the Edinburgh Fringe with her freshly formed theatre company. 'I loved that but it doesn't f***ing pay,' she laments. There were less liberating experiences along the way which poisoned the acting well for Barât. In the following years, she wrote and performed poetry, formed a publishing company and attempted to follow her brother into music but found it to be 'an impenetrable period for any woman. You were either viewed as a groupie or disregarded. I remember the boys when they were signed being swept up by what seemed to me to be middle aged men using them as an excuse to do shitloads of coke and living through these skinny boys with unwashed hair. I'm trying to do what you're doing so why do I have to go and work in Pizza Hut but you're getting a private jet?' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad For a number of years, The Libertines were the toast of London, fronted by two likely lads tearing it up in ever ascending and then descending circles. Carl's equally charismatic co-frontman Peter Doherty was a one man rock'n'roll soap opera and tabloid target for his relationship with supermodel Kate Moss and the rather less glamorous matter of his spiraling addictions and their impact on band relations. Throughout this period, the Barât siblings were flatmates in London, only compounding the disparity in their fortunes. 'We were quite geeky,' she recalls. 'We used to get a jalfrezi and four cans of Stella and sat watching Pearl Harbor. I was almost mother to him but then they got signed, and he started coming home with insane amounts of cash. We were good friends essentially getting wrecked together going to afterparties.' She is at pains to point out that their sibling rivalry has long been put to bed in favour of stable family domesticity but admits that 'we did butt up a bit when Carl and Pete were having their thing, I'd charge at Pete on Carl's behalf so it got a bit messy. Then he was off doing his own thing and I had to sort myself out.' Sorting herself out included kicking her addiction to slimming pills and coming out. Both took several attempts, with the tipping point portrayed in the show. Barât's own music is also used as a conduit for her emotions. Some of her songs - including co-writes with Carl and Pete - will be performed live, while some were pre-recorded at The Libertines' Albion Rooms studio in Margate. There may even be some recorded cameos, but as Shanahan points out to Barât, 'it isn't a story about The Libertines or Carl. It's a story about you and they are the support act.'
Scotsman
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh festivals: 12 shows to be performed at Traverse Theatre this August
An 'honest, wicked and moving unpicking' of the character of the pantomime dame is among a range of original performances unveiled for this year's festival programme at the Traverse Theatre. Scotland's new writing theatre said it had unveiled a programme that 'reaffirms its unwavering commitment to discovering, developing and showcasing the most vital new voices in theatre'. This year's TravFest, which is comprised of 12 productions, including ten premieres, deals with issues from climate change to radicalisation and loved ones developing dementia. Other themes include global conflict and dysfunctional family dynamics, while also bringing joy, humanity, commonality and humour. Gary McNair's solo fable A Gambler's Guide to Dying returns to the Traverse ten years on from its sell-out, award-winning debut. Another production is Standing In The Shadows of Giants, a world premiere of an autobiographical musical play written and performed by Lucie Barât – sister of The Libertines' frontman and guitarist Carl Barât. Meanwhile, The Beautiful Future is Coming – an 'urgent' new play about the onrushing climate apocalypse - will span 250 years of real and imagined history through the eyes of three couples, from 1850s New York to present-day London. The new play by Karis Kelly, winner of the Women's Prize for Playwriting 2022, entitled Consumed, directed by Katie Posner, receives its world premiere on the Traverse stage this August. 1 . Standing In The Shadows Of Giants Lucie Barât, sister of The Libertines' frontman Carl Barât, steps into the spotlight in the world premiere of her autobiographical musical play Standing In The Shadows of Giants, directed by Traverse Associate Artist Bryony Shanahan. | Traverse Photo Sales 2 . She's Behind You Director John Tiffany returns to the Traverse alongside Johnny McKnight with She's Behind You, written by McKnight, an uplifting journey exploring our love of panto and the dames that define it. | Traverse Photo Sales 3 . Rift Inspired by playwright Gabriel Jason Dean's relationship with his own brother, a currently-incarcerated high-level member of the alt-right, RIFT is a story of estrangement, ideological divide, and the fight to change the world. The UK premiere is directed by Ari Laura Kreith and is presented by Luna Stage & Richard Jordan Productions. | Traverse Photo Sales 4 . Red Like Fruit A haunting exploration of complicity, consent, patriarchy and trauma in a post-#MeToo world, Red Like Fruit, brings audiences the latest work of award-winning Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch. This European premiere from 2b theatre company from Halifax Nova Scotia, directed by Christian Barry, sees Luke narrate Lauren's life: her fraying mental health and the unease she feels in the world. | Traverse Photo Sales
