Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

With wicked charm to spare, Emma Doran’s show is as good as a night out with your best friend. Her deceptively simple style is that of the chatty mate, without all the umms and errs. She would keep you in kinks laughing in a bar with a vat of prosecco on hand – and did it here too, without us being fuelled by alcohol.

She eased the audience in without any high-energy antics, just smooth, smiley, expressive chat about her mother (an Everymum figure) and dad, the family Christmas and all the intergenerational dynamics.  

That’s all it is, and yet it is everything; she reflects us back at ourselves, creating the laughter of relatable experiences that carries this show along at a tremendous lick.  

Her personal story was told like she was raised in a Dublin version of Derry Girl, strutting along in her own sassy and naïve world, populated with wrong’uns. In another genre it could be recounted as an Edna O’Brien tragedy, but Doran bends the narrative to her worldview of tough love, survival and acknowledging her own less-than-fine moments. There were howls of recognition about meeting your ex-partner’s new squeeze and what petty anxieties emerge.

She has a masterful range of scornful expressions and performs perfect seething irritation, with incisive lines that are sometimes nearly thrown away.  Fabulously watchable, she would be at home on any club stage, any podcast and any chat show – and more than held her own over an hour.   

Review date: 24 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard