Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Surely only a comedian desperately short of ideas would contrive to sample all 30 fragrances Jennifer Lopez has released over her career and call it a show. Even Emmy Blotnick’s hope that she might be able to ‘unlock the secret of womanhood’ by studying the creations of such a flawless icon seems born more out of hope than expectation.

Luckily for us – if not quite everyone who features in her stories – some dramatic events have unfolded since the New York-based comic first came up with that idea, leaving her with a very different show than first intended. Now 30 Fragrances… boasts a plethora of strong, gag-heavy stand-up routines built around a compelling narrative with some big surprises.

The carcass of the original challenge can still be seen now and again, offering some amusingly vacuous frivolity to contrast with complicated real life. Press releases issued for some of J-Lo’s perfumes are hilariously inappropriate and pretentious, and Blotnick uses them as jumping-off points for whatever tangent she wants to follow. For example, Miami Glow triggers an outpouring of disdain for the whole state of Florida – or, more precisely, its terrible inhabitants – a subject which keeps on giving and provides a constant backdrop to the hour.

Indeed many comments and themes keep recurring in this excellently constructed show, which also doesn’t scrimp on jokes even when a lesser comic might be happy for the events to speak for themselves.

We hear about her mum and her incompetence at a computer – a universal subject, maybe, but wonderfully executed here – about her new boyfriend, a chef who she tries in vain to convince us doesn’t fit all the stereotypes of the job, and about her brother, who definitely does live up to all the stereotypes of his as a Wall Street hedge fund manager. It’s his shameless, sociopathic behaviour that provides the engine for the show’.

There’s something of a pile-up of information at the end as all the strands come to their conclusion – the main one just days before the Fringe started – showing just how much narrative Blotnick has to cover in this hour. But she weaves all the disparate threads into one splendid tapestry of comic storytelling.

•Emmy Blotnick: The 30 Fragrances of Jennifer Lopez - A Show About Death, Betrayal and Financial Ruin is on at Assembly George Square at 6.40pm

Review date: 19 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly George Square