The Funny Women group is a kinda collective collaboration among various women comics to provide advice and assistance to new and existing female acts. In addition they support various charities, with this show being in aid of Period Poverty. It was a showcase and comprised a compère and three comics, each of whom would do a turn then be interviewed by the compère to discuss their Fringe show and other topics.
The compère here was the excellent Lynn Ruth Miller. First thing to note is she's 83, and took comedy up shortly after turning 70. So already pretty impressive. She was also very funny. As you might imagine much of her chat was about aging, how things slow down, dating at her age and so on. She isn't doing a solo show this year which is a shame.
The first comic she introduced was Caroline Mabey, and very funny she was too. Her brief routine involved being highly competitive at online Scrabble (which is apparently a much more reliable way of meeting men than dating apps or websites) and how this competitiveness translates into other areas of her life such as seeing eye-tests as a challenge where the object is to beat the optician and win a pair of glasses (she delivers it much better than me, and the Guardian has already declared it one of the best line at the Fringe so far). During the interview section they amiably chatted about being a woman in comedy, how the scene has changed over the last decade or so and about her show this year called "Quetzals" (the national bird of Guatemala, apparently).
Second up was Rosie Wilby, who was hugely funny. She only had time to do a small portion of her set but it led up to a great punchline with a graph showing the difference between the male and female orgasms (PROTIP - the "plateau" section between arousal and happy finish is much, much longer for one sex. I won't spoil it be saying which...) She had originally been a rock musician but had been encouraged to explore comedy (which, she said, told her what people thought of her musical ability). An excellent snippet of her routine. During the interview she happily announced the availability of her first book - Is Monogamy Dead - and chatted about her current show "The Conscious Uncoupling" which is a follow-on to a show she had done earlier in the Fringe.
The final act was Scottish comic Jay Lafferty, who was the only one I was at least vaguely familiar with. A former producer and writer she had only moved into performing a few years ago. Her brief routine was similarly funny as all the comics on the bill were. However I can't really remember too much about it, other than I did laugh quite a lot during it (that's the thing about seeing so many shows - they all collide and merge into each other). The subsequent chat covered similar ground as the previous ones and her current show "Besom" went onto the must-watch list.
At that the show concluded. As ever, these Best-Ofs and showcases are excellent for introducing you to new talent you might not have considered previously. The interview sections were also interesting - a theme that came up several times but was never really explored was why so many women entered comedy in the mid-2000s after decades of being very much the minority on the circuit. It would have been interesting to have explored that a little further. As the show starts at midday this show is an excellent way to start a Fringe day.
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