Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Not wishing to sound callous, but you know you’ve got a good story to tell when you can start with your best friend’s death, rather than build to it.

It’s not even much of a spoiler to say that’s not the only fatality in Jamie Lee’s compelling show, accurately described as a ‘true crime stand-up hour’ as she investigates what really happened 21 years ago.

That’s when Katy died, unexpectedly, in the pool house of her mum’s home, at the age of 18.  Lee suppressed her grief for two decades, but with her memories reawakened, she started to realise that there were serious questions left unanswered.

Her quest to uncover the truth starts with the suspicious wording of Katy’s death notice in the newspaper, and takes her down various blind alleys and rabbit holes as she becomes increasingly obsessed with her inquiries. Lee gets the audience invested too, with the tantalising phrase ‘Here’s where it gets weird’ popping up time and again.

The comic realises true crime can be an exploitative genre, even before she adds jokes to an already sensitive situation. But Katy being her best friend greatly lessens any ethical questions. Instead the show reflects Lee’s sincere attempt to seek closure over the issue, as well as paying tribute to someone lost too soon in a way that goes beyond the usual obituary platitudes. 

The apparent lack of curiosity from other friends and family about what happened is also telling, an omission of concern that Lee is keen to redress here. And the show is almost as much about the comic’s state of mind as she enters a delayed mourning in her own way, as it is about solving the whodunit. 

Lee, a writer on Ted Lasso, has a good ear for wordplay, especially creative new portmanteaux, and she’s comically savage about her home town of Dallas – ‘where trashy meets classy’ – with a mini-Achy Breaky Heart dance to depict any redneck-like behaviour she wants to highlight.

 It would be easy to undermine tension with a cheap gag to get a laugh, but Lee is more sophisticated than that, with good instincts as to when to be funny and when to be serious and allow the severity of a situation to linger

The story is expertly constructed, ranging from funny anecdotes about a trip to a Six Flags amusement park to the devastating consequences of drug addiction. It also takes in a few tangential issues, such as the dangerously fashionable celebration of emaciated bodies among early 2000s teens. And a sidebar about Lee’s IVF  seems superfluous at the time, but earns its place by the end. 

A keen, lean piece of tragicomic storytelling in a crossover genre all of its own, My Friend Katy will have you hooked and amused for every moment the charismatic Lee is on stage.

Review date: 26 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard