Original Review:

Show Rating:

Tallulah May or may not be a former nun at the ancient Order of St Kathryn the Martyr in Memphis, Tennessee, but she is now that endangered species on the Fringe - a traditional gag-telling stand-up comedian.

Thankfully, though, she doesn't do the stereotypical menstruation and all-men-are-bastards female stand-up act. Instead, she majors on coming from Weston-super-Mare and living without a man (the latter more original than it sounds).

I liked this act tremendously, but it was only ever going to get two stars, even before the billed 50-minute show ended after 30.

Ironically, her delivery was nervous and too fast. If she had halved  her speech  speed, she would have had a better 60-minute show.

There is a helluva lot of well-written material packed in. When she describes old-fashioned housework, she says: "It was like getting a tea stain out of your carpet with a lawnmower."

She has a very funny song about candles into which she manages to lyrically weave Roy Kinnear and a dildo bought in Budapest. In another song, Granny's Ulcerated Leg, sung unintentionally off-key, she manages to rhyme the smell of peaches with leeches and to bring in both no-legged wartime air ace Douglas Bader and Ulster comedian Patrick Keilty.

There is a lot of writing talent demonstrated in this act. She has loads of potential but she needs to  work on the presentation, possibly by caricaturing her own personality so that a stronger stage character is developed behind which she can hide her slight nervousness.

Or she could develop that nun story. I'd pay to hear it.