Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

When does comedy become art and art become pornography? Well, you can judge Jessica Aszkenasy's full-frontal Fringe debut live in the voluptuous flesh. Or on her accompanying OnlyFans channel.

I'm going to mostly agree with the comic's own, perhaps unnecessary and rather pat conclusion that Titclown is just a bit of a cheeky laugh, with nothing too arch or satirical to say about the female body or the male gaze, because it's routinely very funny.

Sporting a Baywatch-style swimsuit, the amply bosomed Aszkenasy certainly appreciates attention as she rises from her prostate pose and introduces herself, in French. That’s likely a nod to her Gaulier training, greater continental casualness around nudity and the accent's association with contempt for bourgeois mores.

She's initially playful, her warming up exercises more Carry On Camping than Belle De Jour. Pretty soon though, she's actively flirtatious. And the first big reveals achieve their aim of shock and embarrassment, a ladylike bit of misdirection ensuring the crowd get both the joke and the butt of its delayed reaction.

Body-positive and progressive as the Edinburgh Fringe can be, Aszkenasy's prowling poise might make this feel closer to a Berlin or Amsterdam sex show, were it not for her tongue-in-cheek vampishness, bouncy – there's no other word for it - presence and the laughter her marks' awkwardness provoke.

Blessed with significant props to invade personal space, she always dutifully seeks Consent and manipulates her assets in a buffoonish rather than explicitly erotic way. Nevertheless, with some tactile audience-performer contact, there's an unmistakeable frisson of boundaries being tested.

She subverts the female imperative to be attractive for lustful lines of vision by carefully applying make-up to her breasts. And they're a sizeable canvas for a messy performance overall that finds her boobs smeared in different fluids. Though hardly a prime consideration, any notion of kink-shaming here is redundant. And outraged opinions about past performances that she shares seem utterly confused, reflecting far more on the commentators than her.

At one point turning her breasts into an antagonistic, slapstick double act, the more familiar iconography of the female chest is alluded to in a series of cultural references. The most ridiculous and jarring of these is a clip of a Victoria's Secret lingerie showcase, the slender, sculptured models, their flamboyant angel wings and Cher's deep, butch vocals making a high camp confection that's risibly weird for such commercialised heterosexuality.

Lest the show ever get straightforwardly sexy, Aszkenasy explores bondage in a way that elicits a few winces and a contemptuous reference to meat from the comic herself. Later she opens up to the tender, nurturing aspect of mammary glands, but her entreaties to hold her baby are every bit as violating of social norms as her deployment of her boobs elsewhere.

Ultimately standing proud, if a little wild-eyed in the manner of a seminal Stephen King horror adaptation, Aszkenasy doesn't have to explain herself and doesn't for non-French speakers, at least initially.

Yet by breaking character to address her motivations for making Titclown, she places financial incentive over psychological need. Her tits might have put bums on seats. But it's her silly, provocative humour and commitment that kept them there.

Review date: 12 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy