Kerry Gilbert: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Just The Tonic at The Caves

This is an ambitiously odd showcase for ballsy sketch comedian Kerry Gilbert, apparently coming from a dark place in her psyche.

She explains that the show has its genesis in her experiences on the Fringe two years ago when she was freshly dumped and wounded by scathing reviews. But it was the boozy lads who thought her show Kerry Gilbert Gives Love A Bad Name was going to be a Bon Jovi tribute that tipped her over the edge, and she slunk back to her parents’ home to Surrey, mid-festival, to find succour in their nurturing familiarity.

So here – allegedly back from the brink of a nervous breakdown, although that’s never conclusively proved – she describes her regression to childhood sparked by the discovery of an old Jem doll, the judgment of her old schoolfriends and the characters of her gruff-talking Mum and guitar-strumming Dad.

The back story certainly gives Gilbert a sympathetic air, even if her obsession with her increasingly successful ex and his new squeeze makes her seem a little unhinged. That’s not helped by the bizarre adventures she describes Jem as having had –  although these apparently were actual plotlines from the animated series from which she sprang.

Gilbert’s characters are almost all exaggerated grotesques, and it is only that they come from her apparently fragile mind that gives them any sense in the world. At times she seems like an emotionally damaged woman going through the dressing-up box to find a different life for herself.

In the ‘real life’ her, she has a winsomeness of a young Felicty Kendall, though happily sacrifices that – along with the last shreds of her dignity – if she thinks it’ll get a laugh. That’s obvious from the Baywatch parody she kicks off with.

The show’s overriding premise is that her life back with her parents is a sitcom she wants to pitch to telly types; though in reality this would be a terrible show with loud characters and too little humour. But the stuff around all that – the ‘real’ her – is what makes this show intriguing, if not always funny.