Review by Julian Hall

It’s brave enough for someone to let reviewers in to the first show of their Edinburgh Fringe debut, but it is arguably braver still if their time slot is in the afternoon.

The eloquent and energetic, Jessica Pidsley does her utmost to generate a momentum sufficient to break through the barrier of post-lunch languor. Ultimately, she succeeds, but without being totally convincing.

It feels like the RADA-trained performer is still a little too close to her theme of learning to love one’s physical appearance to decide whether this is a show about gently mocking the self-help route she took, or wholly endorsing and repackaging it.

While the latter prevails – just – the thread of the show is arrested by nerves (as she herself admits, her leg lunge motions are a classically bad sign of this), consequent bouts of forgetfulness and a rather erratic narrative.

The nerves and the need for prompting are forgivable on day one. However, Pidsley’s narrative focus doesn’t help her to avoid rhythmic arrests. For example, after a neat section showing how her weight problem advanced during her school years, she reveals her induction into a  Slimming World class. Despite this being a rich area to focus on, she fails to colour the experience except for a brief, laboured caricature of someone fooled into revealing how much food they ate at the weekend.

Equally a look at the Slimming World magazine that features her story is cursory, and focuses on her fashion faux pas in the picture, completely ignoring the headline next to it that can be made out to read: ‘This Little Pigsley Went to Slimming World.’ Comedy gold surely? The omission suggests that Pidsley was racing through too much material, or perhaps even that headline still rankled. Either way, it’s an opportunity missed.

Where Pidsley is very much on the ball is in her use of technology, with animations dovetailing nicely with her actions and words. Meanwhile, short films,  including a charity spoof appealing for just ‘two compliments a day’, suggest that her talents more naturally lie with scripted character roles. Certainly her track record in theatre and film – she was one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow – bears this out.

It is early days for the 28-year-old’s stand-up ambitions, and there are positives to be taken from this debut show. If Pidsley had given as much of herself over to this show as she did in an interview in February to one of her local papers in East Anglia, she could have made more of  her debut hour – and perhaps even avoided the clumsy ending that runs like an advert for her social media presence and self-help forum.

Review date: 3 Aug 2012
Reviewed by: Julian Hall