Review by Steve Bennett

It's surely a sign of society moving in the right direction that, in a few short years, feminism has gone from a fringe position to a viable marketing option. Hopefully it'll soon be as redundant as calling your show 'Not A Racist' since the alternative is just so ridiculously untenable.

Indeed some of Kirtsy Mac's jokes on the subject are already in danger of being a bit hack, but at the heart of her show is a story that represents a major victory for the cause. For she was a leading campaigner in getting creepy pick-up artist Julien Blanc kicked out of her native Australia, having orchestrated direct action against sessions he was holding in Melbourne.

It’s a strong tale with a triumph that the audience were always going to root for. But it’s not her only entertaining anecdote: she also got involved in a car crash with an unexpectedly positive consequence – and had to have her beloved dog put down. OK, ‘entertaining’ might seem like the wrong adjective, but it’s a neat section.

Around these tentpole routines she describes, bluntly, unapologetically and certainly unsentimentally, her heavy drinking and a personal low caused by crippling post-traumatic stress. We certainly get a measure of Mac as a person, though there’s potential for more humour in some of this. However she’s not the introspective sort wanting to dwell on herself when she can be using her time in the spotlight telling us what’s what in the rest of the world.

The result is that Feminazi feels a bit more like an extended club set of disconnected routines than a purposeful show, especially as it ran for only around 40 minutes tonight. Yet what a sturdy, ballsy club set it would make. Mac is a raucous, rude and sweary comic – and even if some of the C-bombs dropped seem substitutes for real punchlines, they are certainly not out of character.

She has no truck with too many everyday niceties. She knows what she wants and has it on her own terms: taking free drinks from the men, sure, but that’s the extent of the contract. And her tolerance for others, which often seems as if it’s hanging by a threat at the best of times, snaps when she’s asked for the nth time when she’s going to have a baby.

But if they’ve seen her act they might think twice about her suitability as a parent in any case.

Review date: 13 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot