Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The Edinburgh Fringe has seen many ‘dead dad’ shows before, but none quite like this. Katie Norris’ tribute to her father, a veritable caricature of the old-school posh thespian devoted to the worship of The Theatre, is  not unloving, but it is pathos-free and unsentimental.

One would expect little else from a comedian who’s developed an intimidating, withering stage presence. Norris lists ‘making men feel insignificant’ among her hobbies and makes ‘little simp’ into a catchphrase that she snaps at audience members and has printed up on badges. She’s not shy about acknowledging the sexual potency of such a stance either, ramping up the awkwardness.

She slips in and out of that domineering persona with a laugh, enjoying the discomfort and release, smudging the line between playful and real. ‘I don’t have ADHD,’ she asserts. ‘I’m just an asshole.’

Norris’s professed disdain for men is further illustrated by the story she makes up for her goddaughter, in which all her exes have been turned into despicable toads living at the bottom of the garden. This also prefaces one of a small handful of full-on comedy songs in the show, impressively delivered with the dramatic overplay musical theatre requires and boasting gaggy lyrics.

It’s suggested that the comedian’s friends having children – and the inevitable questions always asked of 35-year-old woman about motherhood plans – turned Norris’s mind to her own parents. Her mother is remarkably cagey – with some big secrets she never disclosed to her children – while the comic has more in common with her father than she’d like.   But where he had Morris dancing as a hobby, she’s taken up taxidermy. It certainly fits that slightly unhinged persona she cultivates.

When he was alive, her father was full of out-of-touch advice for Norris about how to make it as an actor, likewise the comic sees herself as an all-knowing old sage to her Gen Z flatmate. It’s not clear if her words of wisdom are just as unwelcome as her father’s advice to her.

The father-daughter dynamic is complicated, and this show is her attempt to understand him better through the stage they both loved. But in giving him the legacy he wanted – a comedy play on the Edinburgh Fringe – she only exposes how disconnected from modern sensibilities he was.

Go West Old Maid is more restless than her acclaimed solo debut, Farm Fatale, not quite so well-balanced between oddness and narrative. But the unhinged charisma with which Norris delivers her peculiarly funny autobiographical routines should not be underestimated.

Review date: 3 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard