Review by Steve Bennett

From her opening off-stage monologue, it is clear that Pam Ann will be taking her audience hostage on a flight of comedic cruelty as a character revelling in nastiness and loathing.

The women in the audience are likely to be treated with antipathy, prejudice and disgust bordering on misogyny. The males are patronised and demeaned in a grossly seductive manner, excepting those she assumes are gay who will be affectionately chided.

A polished 'safety and promotional' video undermines any reassurance it might afford the passenger by cutting between Pam's hapless and careless demonstrations and footage of planes crashing and fuselages coming apart.

Pam's portrayal of air stewardesses as lazy, deceitful, sleazy, arrogant, drug-addled incompetents contains enough bile to burn a hole in the average whale's stomach.

As a character, Pam is offensive and self-obsessed, assuming that if others do have feelings they should always be secondary to her own.

She is embittered and angry, and although she gains a lot of laughs it is often the fearful, embarrassed or nervous kind. As an audience member you should prepare yourself for the possibility of turbulence in the form of abuse and maybe humiliation. We are aware that Pam does not know when to stop, but her creator Caroline Reid does, but chooses not to.

Caroline is extremely knowledgeable about the world of the cabin crew. She is energetic, dynamic and is obviously used to dictating terms to an acquiescent crowd. She is also inventive, intelligent and able but restricts herself in this show to playing a disappointingly obvious gay icon, the tragic heroine.

Towards the end of the show Pam becomes an increasingly sad figure, suppressing her anger and disappointment (in typical Edinburgh fringe style) with ever increasing amounts of cocaine.

Caroline does succeed in evoking some sympathy for her character but a finale of Pam in flowing dress roller-skating triumphantly to Olivia Newton-John's Xanadu is really too sad.

This comedy vehicle crashes and burns on landing.

Review date: 1 Jan 2002
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett