Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Fired up to be back on stage, Jessica Fostekew has the slight vibe of a rumpled hermit stumbling out of her shack in the woods to rant and rave at passers-by, telling them all the theories she’s come up with while isolated from the world. Post-lockdown, haven’t many of us become a bit like that?

A lot has changed since we were last here. She’s older, weirder and gayer, having ended the relationship with the father of her six-year-old son and embarked on a new one with a woman, falling in love before getting the chance to play the lesbian field as she’d planned.

And she’s still not back up to 100 per cent when it comes to social skills, leaving her small talk with the audience to be primarily Wordle-based. That’s just a ruse, mind, as the game’s recent ban on problematic words, including ‘wench’, offers her an in-road into the show.

As well as conveniently rhyming with her acclaimed former show, Hench, it’s a term she considers to refer to a lairy, bawdy woman – attributes she admires, embodies even – rather than the connotations of promiscuity that led to its withdrawal from the New York Times game.

Changing attitudes are at the heart of her material, exemplified by her struggles to understand her 19-year-old Generation Z niece heading off for a hot girl summer with a sexual confidence alien to the altogether more restrained Fostekew.

Not that the comedian is a prude. She might not want to indulge prurient questions about her new sexuality – greeted with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity, she’s found – but she can be candid and graphic on some intimate matters, like waxing her pubes. This might be a familiar comedy topic, but it’s given a boost by her outlandish telling – punchy, animated and vivid.

Yet where there’s progress, there are also reactionaries. As a new convert to Team LGBT+ in her late 30s, she gets enraged at the homophobia her partner has learned to shrug off – providing a sudden realisation of her previous privilege. No wonder she wants to take arms against those spoiling for a cancel-culture fight, who want to make the slightest curbs on spreading hatred a free speech issue. It’s an issue that flared up for Fostekew when a local election candidate posted a flyer through every letterbox in her London borough declaring same-sex parents as ‘unnatural’ and less safe than heterosexual ones. 

Amid talk of changing language, she mentions those who are bidding to reclaim the term ‘bimbo’, though this doesn’t seem as significant as she makes out, despite her attempts to hang a callback on to it. However, Wench isn’t only concerned with changing social issues, but also spans parenting misadventures, plastic surgery, cats and more – diluting the show's thrust

However, Fostekew is such a powerhouse performer that it doesn’t much matter. She has bulletproof confidence, a delivery that’s physically and vocally dynamic, and rattles through the material at such a lick that it sweeps up the audience in its slipstream as she hurtles towards a gimmicky but effective conclusion.

• Jessica Fostekew: Wench is on at Monkey Barrel Comedy Club at 4.45pm

Review date: 23 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club