Edinburgh Fringe review by Alex Bruce

This is an hour based around time travel, after a previous audience member told Heidi Regan, perhaps passive-aggressively, that this was all she ever spoke about.

Despite a low gag rate, Regan’s personality and overthinking, worrying humour shines through to make this a solid, entertaining show.

Her strongest suit is her ability to have conversations with no one for the audience’s benefit, usually in a time-travelling scenario. She plays out interactions with her younger self, a lady from the 1700s, a previous audience member, her partner, and seven-year-old Adolf Hitler.

Starting from the frequently asked question: ‘Would you time travel and kill baby Hitler?’ Regan goes a stage further, detailing how she’d instead attempt to re-educate young Adolf by binge-watching modern series together, in the hope he would internalise their moral messages.

This is a scenario she mines deeply and this section is better for it, as she’s able to rack up a better gag rate than in her worthwhile and exploratory - but sometimes less engaging - rambles that fleetingly skim across several topics.

With act-outs being based around her overthinking and the inherent confusion of any time-travel interaction, these dialogues-with-no-one descend (positively) into farce, chaos and confusion with misdirection, innocence and faux-naivety. 

Her self-aware navel-gazing is genuine, and not merely a self-deprecation vehicle designed only to access latent narcissistic self-congratulation. She is confident, calm - albeit sometimes a little low-energy - assured, and focused. It’s as if she’s talking directly to one person, and it’s clear she’s someone most would enjoy a conversation with.

She seems to have an entire absence of ego, sacrificing herself with honesty for many jokes, as she relates the effects of years of worrying and overthinking.

Regan introduced the show (after an incredibly long intro/admin section running more than 15minutes) as something that was going to be silly, light-hearted fun. Which maybe it is, compared to the pessimistic inner workings of her brain – because otherwise the so-called ‘light-hearted’ part never really comes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, as her absolute, honest realism is her winning hand.
 
An increased gag rate would take this show over the line. Which doesn’t mean losing the longer, more exploratory passages, which hold their own importance and interest but punctuating them more effectively with the great lines of which she is clearly capable.

Review date: 18 Aug 2019
Reviewed by: Alex Bruce