Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

It’s bold opening with someone else’s gag, but the ‘You might be a redneck if…’ shtick of Jeff Foxworthy has for a long time defined the working-class humour of America’s Deep South.

However, for Melissa Stephens, life does not fit into such tidy joke packages – and ‘relatable’ would not be the first word that springs to mind to describe her ghastly experiences.

By her own account, she’s from a ‘pretty garbage’ background in Georgia, and in one aside, casually mentions spending her schooldays in what was effectively solitary confinement, so problematic was her behaviour.

But that didn’t happen in isolation, and Hot Dogs And Tears is a catalogue of incidents from childhood that formed her. Her father’s idea of a Christmas meal was to take the kids to Hooters, while mum was aggressively angry and resentful towards her children. When Stephens impersonates her over-emotional outbursts, it’s quite terrifying. With such a family background of emotional abuse, she fell readily into rebellion and drug-taking, which she fully embraced.

On a technical level, the show stutters: the anecdotes seem haphazard and, of course, don’t come with convenient conclusions. When flashbacks of Band Of Brothers, her safe place, are projected on to the screen behind her, it ruins whatever momentum she has built up. And she hasn’t tailored the show to UK audiences, even though her husband is British. It’s not a massive deal, but she could save the audience wasting a beat or two working out what a particular brand name might be.

Yet ultimately none of this really matters, because with the space the hour format allows her, Stephens builds up a vivid picture of her past, one disturbingly frank story at a time, and we are slowly drawn into it. It’s a very effective exercise in world-building.

Her anecdotes are greeted with laughs of shock and disbelief at just how insane her young life was. What’s remarkable is quite how well-adjusted Stephens seems on stage. For all the childhood drama, she’s in control of her story, her candour being a major factor in making her such an engaging stage presence.

Shockingly, she hints that there are even more tales, even more traumatic, to be told in another show. Though for the moment, this is more than enough suffering repurposed as truthful comedy to unload.

• Melissa Stephens: Hot Dogs & Tears is on at Assembly Rooms at 7.40pm

Review date: 11 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly Rooms