Review by Steve Bennett

Inspired by a candid memoir she wrote last year, Number 26 covers pretty much all of her adult life, played out in the ‘ugly and repulsive’ house that was all she could afford as a first-time buyer. Over the intervening 25 years, those cracked and peeling walls have witnessed children born and growing up, extramarital affairs and her coming to terms with her mother’s worsening Azheimer’s.

Half a lifetime has been compressed into this brisk 60 minutes of shared confidences, delivered in her dressing gown, as if gossiping to neighbours who popped round unannounced. She’s delightfully grouchy and gloriously indiscreet – and happy to confess her failings as an inappropriate mother, lazy wife and selfish daughter. ‘I am a role model,’ she says. ‘Just not a good one.’

This is an evocative celebration of ordinary life. Her husband may be a circus performer and she a comic, but it’s not this unusual existence that makes the show, rather the everyday tales of dealing with a child’s eczema, singing along to radio jingles or trying to have that awkward ‘birds and bees’ talk with her teenage offspring.

As a stand-up, she’s got better timing than an atomic clock, and is a mistress of misdirection, again and again reeling the audience in with finely developed storytelling skills before a killer punchline out of nowhere. The sarcastic comedy is enlivened by musical interludes and the assured directorial hand of Alan Brough, making this a satisfyingly substantial one-woman show.

Over the course of the hour, you feel as if you have shared a taste of Scottie’s journey through life, with its ups and downs, struggles and challenges, poignancy and laughs. But mainly just the fabulous laughs.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melbourne, April 2009

Review date: 1 Jan 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett