Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

There’s a disclaimer, so the stakes must be high! So asserts Holly Spillar after an intriguingly looped message that Tall Child is a work of pure fiction and that any resemblance between her characters to real people is entirely coincidental. 

So this is absolutely not about the time she worked as a minimum-wage glorified babysitter for a billionaire’s daughter, who would arrive each day with ten gun-toting bodyguards in tow.  

That is a fascinating premise on its own, to which Spillar adds the potent contrast between such immense privilege and her own life as a working-class woman struggling to make it in the arts. The comic bills this as a ‘hate the rich’ show, and even if she engenders some sympathy for a three-year-old who will never know a normal life, it’s hard to escape that conclusion.

She sets the scene by talking about her own very different childhood as an outsider at Christian school but finding some artistic outlet in the caravan park talent night, wittily described here, which ultimately resulted in a performing arts degree.

Spillar has put it to good use with a very distinctive presentation, right down to setting a moody lighting state. Even her stand-up segments have a musicality with repetition and cadence of her already sing-song voice.

Her loop pedal gets plenty of use, too, with several witty and hypnotic tracks and a Charli XCX parody that offers the most astute take on rich girls’ love of performative poverty since Pulp’s Common People.

Spillar’s description of the ‘shit slope’ of capitalism is a visceral, comically disgusting image to capture the full horrors of the system as she sees them. Her approach is broadly similar to Bridget Christie’s, as she uses ever-escalating absurdity to drive home a political point. 

Yet from the same mind comes a tender description of her connection with the tiny ‘future landlord’ in her care, which is agonising when it breaks.

Rather than being  an out-and-out comedy show, Tall Child is more of a rounded piece of politically charged art, created to make an impression rather than laughs end-to-end. But a tart, vinegary humour flavours every scene, and Spillar gets her point across in a boldly distinctive way.

Review date: 6 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Underbelly Bristo Square