Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

To talk about lockdown or not? That’s the dilemma facing comedians, aware that audiences may well be seeking escape from all that.

But as a shared, extreme experience, it might be remiss – perverse even – for an observational stand-up not to broach the subject. That’s the approach Jay Lafferty has taken. ‘What’s left to say?’ she asks rhetorically. ‘Loads! We haven’t had the chance to get together to process this until now.’

This introduces a run-down of relatable subjects and cultural touchstones from the past 18 months: declining standards of loungewear, abandoned self-improvement projects, clapping for carers, endlessly hearing about ‘wild swimming’…

Little here will come as any surprise, but as she breezily grumbles about the experience, the show does what she promised: to bind us together and acknowledge the strangeness of these times.

Her pandemic was complicated by becoming a mother at the start of last year and winding up back with her parents in Greenock, a place she describes bleakly. She regresses to her younger self, Mark Owen crush and all, while her peculiar yet gregarious father provides one of the more memorable anecdotes of the hour.

Storytelling is Lafferty’s forte: a bizarre encounter with an out-of-his head ‘bam’ in the street provides another eventful tale, but that is trumped by a doozy of a recollection about youthful, Alanis Morrisette-powered empowerment which sounds like it could have come straight out of a John Hughes movie – until it went hilariously, embarrassingly wrong. 

It’s these first-hand stories, told in an effortlessly friendly way, that binds us to Lafferty more than the shared experiences of lockdown – and makes Blether more than the unfocussed, unsubstantial chat that its self-deprecatory name suggests.

• Jay Lafferty: Blether is at Gilded Balloon Teviot at 6.30pm until August 29.

Review date: 15 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Teviot