This was a compilation show for female comics. It's important to set the context.
The previous show ("Shappi Khorsandi: Nina Is Not Okay") was good fun but when I walked out, the skies had clouded over and it was spitting. Fine. It's unreasonable in Scotland to expect more than two days of decent weather. I walked back up to Rose Street and to the Kenilworth, which was a reasonable distance from the George Square Theatre. I was desperately trying to knock a review out so I was late (for me) leaving the Kenilworth and heading up for my minimum 20 minute Fringe queue. As I stepped outside on to Rose Street it was absolutely pouring. But I was late and had no choice - I ploughed on. Hardly Captain Scott. Obviously I was soaked by the time I got up to St. Andrew's Square but, more than that, I had had a fall. Into a muddy puddle. So when I turned up at the Stand In The Square I was wet, cold, sore, muddy and angry (at myself mostly for being a clumsy idiot). And then had to stand in a queue for 15 minutes getting wetter and angrier.
I wasn't in the best of moods when we were finally allowed in and I took my seat (in the front row, natch, where I like to be).
Fortunately the bill was good. Here who was on:
The compère was a girl called Kiri Pritchard-McLean - a funny vivacious lass . She did the usual audience interaction bit - going through folks at the front. I was sitting next to a Spanish couple - she got good mileage out of them. Another whose name I forget. Then she turned to me ...
"Your name is ...?"
"Michael."
"Nice to meet you Michael. And what do you do?"
"I'm a freelance IT manager"
"IT ..."
She looks at the audience. Then says, "Let's just leave it there ..." I killed a comedy routine stone dead. That didn't really cheer me up either ... Anyway, each act had around 8 minutes so, at best, they could only do a snippet of their material ...
First act up was an Israeli comic called Daphna Baram. Suffice it to say I wasn't keen on her act. As ever I keep returning to my admiration for people just willing to put it out there, but I didn't really like her material. Not the target demographic ...
Second act was much more my thing - Sindhu Vee, a rather striking tall female Indian comic, married to a Danish man, spent a lot of time in America .... a veritable global culture clash. She was very good, very funny. Of course she played on the kaleidoscope of influences on her and her family. But told some really funny tales: trying to get people to remember her name; falling out with her husband and destroying Christmas for their child in a way only Indian mothers can ... really very funny.
Third act was Mary Bourke, whom I have seen and loved before (here). She was just as good as I had seen previously - she did the Fem Fresh routine and a few others but didn't really have the time to do much more.
Final act was a girl called Jayde Adams. She's a big lass and I was a bit concerned her routine would be all about that, but after the start it was ignored. What she was was very funny, and then she only bloody well turned out to be an opera singer with a very funny story about a Megabus trip where she intimidated a bunch of chavs into shutting their interminable music off by singing, at the top of her lungs, Nessun Dorma at them which was rather surprisingly and impressively repeated for her soggy audience.
A good show then. Very enjoyable. But as the show ended and the realisation I would have to head back outside into the pouring rain and mud, already soaked and muddy and sore from my fall ... my heart sank. I felt I had had enough. I had a show at 1755 (Viv Groskop: Be More Margo) but I did what any lone man in my position would do - go to the pub.
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