Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

There probably aren't many acts who would cap their comeback tale with a sincerely performed dance routine from Cats after the 2019 film flop stunk up all associations with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Yet Abby Howells is not most acts. And that year was also when she made her return to stand-up after seven years away, a triumphant return after the fledgling comic suffered a breakdown induced by a boorish male headliner.

HarleQueen is the tale of how a young, autistic woman from the small town of Dunedin in New Zealand found, lost and found again her comedic vocation, despite a repeat pattern of dreadful treatment by men.

Through it, she threads the stories of female comics from history who've been similarly oppressed but fought back to have the last laugh, from Mary I's jester Jane Foole, to silent film star Mabel Normand, black pioneer Moms Mabley and comic-turned-chatshow host Joan Rivers.

Growing up, Howells hoped to be a musical theatre star. She was infatuated with The Phantom Of The Opera, taking from it the message that it's better to be seen by an obsessive madman than not seen at all. But this was not to be the path of her stage career, where she was routinely shunned by casting directors and reduced to backstage roles.

One wryly funny and particularly heartbreaking episode has her cleaning up in the theatre after a show, when she's approached by the leading man. Unfortunately, she's misread the cues.

Her eager-to-please vulnerability attracted the wrong type of guys. And though she can be wise after the fact, the egotistical cruelty of her religious boyfriend and the infidelity of another, who was also a performer and jealous of her star quality, is difficult to hear. Howells' cheerfully defiant moxie and ability to process her upset in the retelling barely impinges upon your disgust at these self-centred swine.

Happily though, while Howells wasn't destined to be a musical star, a role as the cowardly Lion in a school production of The Wizard of Oz revealed a hitherto unrealised talent for comedy. So when years later, the opportunity arose to try stand-up, Howells – recently single, in her early twenties and inspired by Jim Carrey – decided to grasp it.

The rush from the response she received is still palpable, as she was infatuated all over again, each gig bringing greater acclaim. Soon, she started making plans to move to Auckland to get more stage time. Sadly, it was a gig there that broke her, the onstage, sexual leering of the unnamed headliner - now a television face in New Zealand apparently - severely impacting her mental health and smashing her resolve. Returning to Dunedin, Howells put her comedy dreams behind her.

Yet each of her historic exemplars faced similar setbacks and came back stronger, though it's debatable whether posterity recognising Normand's role in making Charlie Chaplin a star is adequate compensation for the way he treated her. And what might Rivers have achieved if her erstwhile mentor Johnny Carson hadn't blackballed her?

Howells doesn't have space in her narrative for such considerations of nuance and wider context, distinctly tangential as they are to her personal story. An earnest, likeable performer, she currently endears more than she slays, but it is difficult not to be charmed by her vivacious stage presence and renewed sense of purpose.

• HarleQueen is on at Underbelly George Square at 5.50pm.

Review date: 26 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Underbelly George Square