Camden Fringe comedy review

Two new comedians, American expats both, share this hour en route to their first solo shows… but it looks like it’s going to be a long road to the finished article.

Their inexperience is writ large. Both seem to be very green open-miccers downloading mildly amusing anecdotes without much nose for a punchline nor instinct for how to edit and shape stories into sharpened stand-up routines. 

For her half, Nice Try (**), Rabiah Coon has the most raw material to work with and very occasionally hits on a proper gag – such as the fact that her name is both ethnic and racist. There’s a bit about her part-Lebanese background, but mainly it’s a sizeable catalogue of medical woes, from MRI scans to Segway accidents; coeliac disease to unlikely sporting injury.

However, there’s little sense of storytelling in this collection of incidents, too often overburdened with unnecessary background information and fizzling out with a semi-wry self-deprecating comment rather than something punchier. 

A story about a self-administered Heimlich manoeuvre has the most potential, giving a bit more insight into who Coon is beyond her medical records and featuring some much-needed momentum in a set that too often fails to put enough spin on what becomes a list of things that have happened to her. 

In Clown Nipples (*) Stephanie Lorence has even less focus and discipline. Take, for example, the title – a good one – which comes from how her daughter described her.  

But Lorence has no follow-up or context save to spend a couple of minutes mulling aloud: ‘What does that mean? Why would she say that?’ A comic’s instinct would be to suggest funny answers to those questions.

Distractedly pacing the stage with lots of ‘um, anyway, so, OK, yeah’s, Lorence unburdens herself of domestic gripes in the way she might over a parents' coffee break, again without moulding them into the shape of stand-up.

Why many incidents are in any way noteworthy remain a mystery. Such as her husband saying he’d take a day off to maybe read a book in the garden, or her buying a £20 box of chocolates, or an ex jokingly threatening to send a clown-o-gram round for her birthday when she hates them. Frankly, a lot of this sounds like petty grumbles, and not in a self-aware way. Save it for Mumsnet.

Observations are made but unexplored, incidents recounted but not made funny. All the added value a comedian should be bringing to the table, in other words.

• Clown Nipples and Nice Try continues at the Etcetera Theatre, Camden, at 7.30pm until Wednesday, then again on Sunday as part of the Camden Fringe.

Review date: 9 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Etcetera Theatre