Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Olivia Xing is feeling torn. She doesn’t want to define herself solely as a ‘Chinese comedian’, yet recognises that’s a selling point in a crowded market. Nor is she sure about how much she needs to bring issues-based material into a Fringe show, when she feels she’s a crowdpleasing club comedian at heart. 

Getting an IUD fitted back home in the States is the foundation of this hour, but how much should she use that to address the pain of women’s experience and body autonomy in an age where Donald Trump is curtailing abortion rights? Also, the cruel president has created a hostile environment for anybody who’s not white, such as herself and her Mexican-American husband – she has to address that, surely? Not wanting to bring a child into that venomous world is a major factor in getting the contraception, after all.

These dilemmas are played out via dialogues with her ‘director’, whose contributions come via voiceover. However, these segments are intrusive and detract from Xing’s stand-up. Plus the fact that she voices both director and the gynaecologist causes confusion about who’s speaking at least once.

Such theatrical tricks are unnecessary given she’s such an engaging, winsome stand-up, whose act-outs are sometimes reminiscent of a less troubled Maria Bamford.

Yes, she does have lots of mischievous jokes that her nationality allows her to tell, including one brutally funny line speaking to both the US curbing abortions and China’s one-child policy that any comic would envy. And in a second language! But being Chinese doesn’t preclude her from talking about anything she chooses – such as a section about her cat Lo-Fi. It would seem a mistake to ignore her background if it meant throwing out some of her best jokes.

Struggling for a comic identity talks to the twentysomething stand-up’s relative lack of experience, as does her confession that she is still ‘too scared to be honest’. Hopefully she’ll figure it out, as she has a lot in her favour, with an easy stage manner and an intelligent curiosity about the world, and the country, she lives in.

Review date: 21 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot