Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

At a fresh-faced and motor-mouthed 46, Desiree Burch leverages both the fire of youth and the wisdom of age in her new show The Golden Wrath, looking at the physiological and psychological processes of early middle-age. Specifically, she’s here to use her forceful charisma to educate us on the perimenopause and everything that comes with it.

Many shows in recent years have tackled women’s health through a feminist lens, and Burch strays often into well-trodden territory in the first half, warming up the largely Gen X crowd with stuff on their shared cultural upbringing and the commonly understood benchmarks of different generations. 

She’s a charismatic enough performer that she can rattle off this material about social mores and toothbrushing habits in her sleep, although there’s no element of sleepiness to her fiery indignation.

Having teased the subject at regular intervals, the second half shifts into a higher gear with a winning routine about the symptoms of perimenopause delivered in a gameshow-style rundown like she’s providing voiceover on The Generation Game. 

It’s a good way to leaven a topic which she represents as a magnification of ageing’s many indignities, railing against the lost sleep, the lost bone density, the brain fog and the general feeling that she’s beginning her ‘final descent into cronedom’.

The show is at its best when it gets into minute detail: the specific hormones, what they do and what happens to a woman’s body when they grind to a halt. An extended section on vaginal dryness is an obvious barnstormer.

It turns out this educational mode really suits Burch, harnessing her skills in polemic, her passion, and her desire to bring everyone into the tent, regardless of age, race or gender.

It’s rare that she hits on a truly original comic idea but she does just fine at creating an uplifting communal atmosphere of anger, defiance and recognition. The show climaxes with a poignant acknowledgement of how her experiences of middle-age reframe her memories of her mother, who was raising her while fighting the same battles that Burch and many other women face at a certain point in their life.

Review date: 9 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club