Review by Steve Bennett

Not everyone got the memo… ‘We don’t have a Sarah Franken here, but we’ve got Will Franken,’ the lad outside Stands 5 & 6 told a friend of mine: ‘I think Sarah’s down the road.’

So her transitioning from Will to Sarah a few weeks before the Fringe needs to be addressed at the top of the show, something of a departure for a comedian who tends to hide behind as many layers of character as she can justify. Though in fact it makes very difference for the audience who already have to accept this intense American as everything from a thuggish gangster to a happy-clappy hymn-singing evangelist to snotty Englander in the next 57 minutes.

And though far from the ‘personal journey’ show others in the same position might feel compelled to do, Franken does let the issue inspire several of her fast-paced sketches, not least when she becomes the leader of a gender awareness session, answering the WTF? questions of the populace.

This is just one moment that zips past in a conveyor-belt of Pythonesque absurdities, which increasingly reveal a more satirical edge and running themes. Her targets range from the fawning media punditry over Princess Charlotte, vacuous PR ladies, to her favourite topics, Isis terrorists, who she imagines being trained by a no-nonsense US sports coach, or having their own airline for jihadists – the stand-out sketch of the hour and an instant classic.

It’s a fast-moving picture, as the multi-skilled Franken adopts dozens of personas and each scene segues seamlessly into the next. Parodies of global topics sit cheek-by-jowl with skits exploring some of her personal issues (such as the hilarious Dippity Clown who haunts her every thought)

As an audience you need to stay alert to keep up with this strong current of peculiar thoughts, even though each scene works as a stand-alone sketch. Franken was friends with Robin Williams, and they clearly share a freewheeling mind that can leap form subject to subject, character to character, in search of a bigger picture.

The only slight problem with that is that few of the rest of us are gifted with such a brain; which means the intensity of the material can sometimes leave you punch-drunk. The fact that some scenes only make full sense in retrospect – and some never do – muddles things further.

Yet her best scenes are sublime on their own terms, and at every stage the execution is seriously impressive.

Review date: 14 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Stand 5 and 6