Eleanor Morton is a young Scottish comedian, based in London, who has been writing and performing for 4 or 5 years. She was a new name to me and I was unaware of her previous work or stand-up so I was quite keen to hear what she had to say.
The theme of the show was how she is getting increasingly angry at the world, but admitted up-front she generally struggles with maintaining anger, it usually expressing itself through frustration and tears. From that expectation-reset there then followed an excellent hour of stand-up with a very positive feminist slant. She talked about how on any comedy line-up, festival, TV panel show or showcase there is one woman but no room for any others - as if there is a quota system (it's getting better but still a long way to go). She talked about the inherent everyday sexism she encounters, from older, male producers and agents giving her advice while leaning in and touching inappropriately to being told "Hey, you shouldn't talk about sexual assault so much, it's a bit of a downer". To be fair, she had just beaten the chap who gave her this advice twice at Laserquest so he was probably feeling touchy and vulnerable.
She covered a number of other areas - she had an emotional breakdown at St. Andrews University (her condition improved considerably when she transferred to Glasgow, of course) which meant she couldn't really watch emotionally engaging movies as it would make her too anxious - she's over it now and this formed an ongoing theme in her set where she asked for titles of movies and she would rework them with female leads (the Taxi Driver one was inspired - "A woman in the 70s is working as a taxi driver ... nah, sorry, that could never happen ..."). She told excellent and thoughtful stories about some of the forgotten female figures in history who have just been airbrushed largely out of history such as Margaret Hamilton (not the actress) who led the software team at NASA that developed the navigation software for the Apollo programme, and Mary Seacole, a Jamaican nurse who founded and ran the British Hotel (a hospital and care home behind the lines in the Crimean War). She told a fabulous story about Marilyn Monroe, which may or may not have been true but I really liked her interpretation. Lots of other good tales, including an etiquette question about smear tests and a baffling paper published by an American doctor about women and how anger in women is picked up and reinforced by vibrations in the Earth - seemed legit to me.
Her set ended with an impassioned plea for tolerance, understanding and celebration of equality, which was amusingly and deliberately cut short by a man, allowing her to flirt and apologise and "be the nice girl".
A great set from a very charismatic and distinctive performer, and a good start to the day.
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