Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Brit Barron was brought up an evangelical Christian, dedicated her life to religion, and used to preach to 5,000 people multiple times a day as a pastor at a Mississippi megachurch. Something has changed, though, because the Barron who greets us seems decidedly reformed. ‘I only have one transferable skill and it is this,’ she says.

So now Barron is a stand-up comedian. But how did she get here? Church is her journey from childhood to becoming a married lesbian woman. It walks us through her years of happily going to church, attending Christian college, and trying her best to keep her sin count as low as possible. 

She built her entire life around her religion. Then, at age 30, she fell in love with a woman who also worked at her church, and the foundations that held her up for so many years start to crumble. It forces her to choose between the two great loves of her life.

Barron can look back on her youth with fresh eyes now. The songs she sang were actually lifted from popular culture, with a few pro-God lyric swaps. And, unsurprisingly, there were signs that she was a lesbian right from the start. While her peers found it hard to resist the pull of sexual temptation with their boyfriends, Barron found it remarkably easy to resist. She tells us this with a mischievous twinkle – it helps to laugh at herself, it seems.

But this isn’t a neat abandon-your-faith-and-run sort of twist. Barron talks in poetry about leaving behind her religion, which was ‘her first language’ – and she still carries all the grief that came with it. The comedian misses a lot about her old life: the music, the community, and the performance of it all. With the help of the dulcet-toned Paul Stephen on keyboard, she shows rather than tells us about the hypnotic, healing power of mass song.

Her background has left Barron more than comfortable speaking to large audiences, but in her laid-back, conversational tone, she is more friend than preacher. Her sermon is that we shouldn’t turn our noses up at the myriad things people do to make themselves feel okay – whether that be going to church, doing drugs or dabbling in the world of equine therapy. 

And though religion may have its flaws, there’s something deeply human about the desire to put our faith in something bigger. While Barron’s narrative is largely linear and her jokes more likely to elicit polite giggles than belly laughs, stand-up has clearly given Barron a new congregation. 

Review date: 18 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Anya Ryan
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot