Fringe comedy reviews: Bebe Cave | Eleanor Morton | Sophie Duker | Olga Koch
Four smart, sharp, and very funny women take centre stage in our latest round-up of Fringe comedy reviews.
Bebe Cave: Swoon ★★★★
Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 30 August
Eleanor Morton: The Mermaid ★★★★
CabVol at Monkey Barrel (Venue 338) until 30 August
Sophie Duker: Hot Beef Injection ★★★★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August
Olga Koch: Fat Tom Cruise ★★★★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August
In Swoon, her latest high-energy, deliriously funny character show, Bebe Cave examines the role of the muse in art, specifically within the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, for whom the exhausted, dying look was the ideal beauty standard.
To do this, she inhabits the character of Bertrude, the made-up sister of the real Elizabeth Siddal, whose wan beauty inspired several exquisite paintings, among them John Everett Millais’ Ophelia. A poet and artist in her own right, Elizabeth married Dante Gabriel Rosetti two years before dying from a laudanum overdose.
In Cave’s show, the languid Lizzie observes how: “People are obsessed with perceiving me. As I got colder, the painters found me hotter. I’m not that deep – I just look good when I’m wet.”
As Lizzie retreats from public, barmaid Bertrude’s desperation to be noticed by the “rebel dreamers” turns her into the ultimate Victorian “pick me” girl. Previously in demand as a child model, she’d become too curvy and healthy-looking during puberty to be of interest to those painters who clearly eroticised death.
Those artists, meanwhile, are all presented brilliantly as some of the most annoying and pretentious young guys you encounter today.
They project their own fantasies onto Lizzy, demonstrating, as many men over time have, that their curiosity about women doesn’t go beyond how they want her to look, and what they imagine she should be like.
A riotously funny demonstration of Cave’s irresistible talent for playing multiple characters, using ridiculous props and accents to get us into the groove of who’s who, it’s a rich and satisfying cautionary tale that even features the Bronte sisters and some insight into Lewis Carrol’s creepy take on what his own muse wanted.
Enjoying The Scotsman's coverage of the Edinburgh festivals? For just £2 a month you can get unlimited access to scotsman.com plus 2-for-1 Fringe tickets. For details visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions
The way men have historically perceived mermaids, and her own childhood desire to be one, provides rich material for Eleanor Morton as she sits on a rock in the costume of one of these divine aquatic creatures.
As someone who struggled to feel alluring when she was younger, and was bullied for the crime of being pale and ginger, it saddened her that she never managed to feel like a mermaid on the beach, or indeed at the leisure centre.
After all, mermaids represented freedom and – crucially for a teenage girl whose sex education left out anything about fun, pleasure or consent, focusing largely on the scary details of childbirth – they would never have to have sex; how could they?
Digging deeper, she explores what mermaids represent to some men who, often through no fault of their own (having gone straight from Beano to lads’ mags when girls of her age at least had the likes of Shout and Just 17 to hold their hands through adolescence) are terrified by the reality of women’s bodies. Mermaids are the ideal – they possess all that beauty with none of the complicated bits.
Mythology is full of examples of men mistrusting beautiful women, and that’s a fear fully embraced by the present-day manosphere, where there is a suspicion that, once she removes her makeup, the fanciable woman might actually be a monster. Being “catfished”, they seem to feel, is on a par with being lured to your death by a siren.
Morton has honed her writing and performances with intelligence and wit over the years and presents her joke-heavy work with an understated, welcoming energy that belies the sharpness of her observations. We hope you’re watching, BBC Radio 4 commissioners.
“Man or bear?” Sophie Duker asks her audience in Hot Beef Injection, referring to the thought experiment that involves women having to choose whether they’d rather be alone in the woods with a random man or a random bear. Guess what most people answered – out there in the world and here in a packed venue.
Duker is done with men – straight men, to be specific. She’s a bisexual woman but, now that she’s in a fulfilling relationship with a woman, she only really needs blokes for essential maintenance work. But even then, having a man in her home sets her on edge – with good reason.
It’s the first of several examples she provides of men being wrong ’uns, others including an unacceptable abuse of power by a comedy club boss and another creepy guy who locked his car door after she accepted a lift from him. Obviously, it’s not all men, but it’s usually men, isn’t it?
On the best form of her career, Duker owns the stage with charm and assurance, leaving us with just enough optimism about the next generation of boys to prevent us from taking to the streets with knives. Kudos, too, for the best Elon Musk joke of the Fringe.
Olga Koch’s latest offering, Fat Tom Cruise, feels as if she’s leading us confidently down a corridor, briefly opening doors here and there to give us a tantalising glimpse of each room before moving on to the next, and ultimately zooming out to show us how they all fit together.
With a typically high joke rate, playful use of the space and smart, dynamic text-heavy staging, Fat Tom Cruise is a forensically constructed hour that weaves together a few key strands.
Among these are the revenge she wreaked upon a boy who didn’t fancy her back in high school, her brief but memorable interactions with a man she met during a hazing ceremony at a United States frat party, and three surprising Supreme Court gender equality cases picked up by the American Civil Liberties’ Union.
There are moments when the frat party boy tale threatens to head into a particularly dark corner, but, boy, is there a surprise. Elsewhere, Koch illustrates some painful but all-too-common examples of cruel traditions and behavioural patterns among certain men that can damage them just as much as they hurt women.
The ultimate messages are that gender equality benefits everyone and that perhaps we’re all still learning how to say “no” – not just to those who don’t have our best interests at heart, but to ourselves when swept up in the normalisation of making fun of others. Ashley Davies
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.