Review by Jay Richardson

Plummy and 'quite posh', it's little surprise to learn that Lucy Frederick was a member of The Pony Club.

Yet as a sensitive, artistic child, she was out of step with their militant creed. And that sense of never quite belonging persists as she reveals how she seeks solace in our furry friends and a perfunctory one-night stand.

Named after the least interesting pet her mother raised in West Africa, Frederick, disappointingly doesn't have too many tales about genuinely wild wildlife, beyond swimming with dolphins in Cuba, which at least has a wan, none-too-edifying appeal for Flipper's persecution of 'the big girl'.

With her halting, suddenly gushing style, she doesn't deliver stand-up so much as reportage, the jokes few and far between. Which would be reasonably OK, she's affable and self-deprecating, if more of her hour was devoted to those wonderful beasts controversially slaughtered by big game hunters. Or even the farmyard animals she grew up with, affectionately loved until they were pragmatically dispatched. Instead, this is mostly about scampish cats and dogs, dinner party conversation perhaps but a bit of a stretch for a Fringe show.

Reaching a nadir with her tortuous explanation of how her pets' names were shortened, the escapades of these critters are never so incredible or naughty that anybody won't be familiar with similar stories.

Admitting that she's guilty of it herself, she protests at the anthropomorphism of animals. But with not nearly enough irony, she undermines this by suggesting that knowing such a term is the product of private education. Along with some misguided asides about dodging bullets in the ghetto of her comfortable North London enclave, the effect is alienating rather than the self-mockery surely intended.

A similar jarring tone accompanies her description of a Tinder hook-up in blunt, regressive terms of his mental health, without offering any proof beyond the customary gaucheness of youth. This is a shame because she actually segues effectively from literal animal tales to her status as a Cougar, introducing an interesting line of enquiry about a generation who've taken their sex instruction from the internet.

Concluding their business without much messy entanglement, Frederick argues that we should be free to conduct our amorous liaisons like the animal kingdom, with honesty and wild abandon. Notwithstanding the technological advances that make such click-and-connect encounters possible, sure, why not? But it's a pat conclusion to a moribund hour.

Review date: 19 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot