Original Review:

Show Rating:

But this Fringe debut is certainly not stand-up; in fact it feels as if it belongs in the Book Festival rather than the Fringe. A pleasant, suburban Jewish woman, she has written an anthology of short stories about recent big events in her life: Turning 50, the death of her father, discovering she was a lesbian late in life, and adopting a baby.

Writing them, she says, has ‘touched a part of my soul’ – and if you don’t like this sort of Hallmark Cards-style way of expressing emotion, you’d probably best stay away. She reads direct from the page, with little concession to performance. It might make a good book when it’s published in April, but delivered solidly yet dispassionately in a comedy club, comes across as somewhere as cutesy and trite, even if it is told with sophistication.

She has four stories. The first is a eulogy to her father, who stoked her interest in comedy after hearing him tell dirty jokes she didn’t understand. It’s touching, but hardly laugh-a-minute stuff. There is more natural humour in the story of how she discovered her sexuality late in life, with engaging gags sprinkled through the prose. Even when it’s a straightforward joke about oral sex, it’s stylish, ‘cos this is literature.

Her third story is about the adoption of the Third World baby with her partner, but this again seems over-serious as she mulls the pros and cons. There’s also little self-awareness; for example in one passage she righteously says that she wants him to keep his Guatemalan name rather than take an American one; moments later she’s talking about his bar mitvah. Well, good job she’s only imposing her religion on him, then…

The final story starts with her most precious memory, seeing the Beatles live at Shea Stadium while still a youngster. So if she wants to boast about it, she cannot deny her age. Again, this is solemn, poetic, examination of aging, but comedy, it’s not.

You can see this one-woman show finding an audience, but promoting her in the same way as the other, more alternative American stand-ups populating the GRV schedule probably isn’t the right way to seek it.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett