Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Bianca Del Rio is not your typical drag queen but a fierce, steel-edged insult comedian who just happens to sport vertiginous hair and a snazzy canary-yellow suit that dazzles almost as much as she does.

She’s in the same EICC venue that banned Jerry Sadowitz – a ‘dump’ that’s far beneath her, of course – and could give the bitter Scotsman a run for his money when it comes to vicious slurs sneered out in a blizzard of profanities. But that she’s more obviously a comic exaggeration – and from the same LGBTQ community where she directs her most acidic scorn – makes her equal-opportunities hate a lot more palatable.

Another comparison would be with Joan Rivers, having finessed her catty comments so they pierce like a stiletto – the knife or the footwear. Her crowd work is a torrent of uncompromising abuse about people’s looks, dress sense, sexuality, and life decisions – exactly the brutal mistreatment they paid for. Some even willingly submit questions at the end, just to be humiliated, as she brings some verbal S&M to the Q&A.

If there’s one thing Del Rio hates more than the scum in her audiences, it’s drag queens. They’re everywhere, she feels, and reserves her most personally savage vitriol for anyone who took part in RuPaul’s Drag Race after her 2014 victory, especially if they wittered on about their ‘journey’. Ugh. Even if you don’t know the personalities she’s talking about, you get the gist pretty quickly. ‘Subtlety’ is not in her vocabulary, nor is ‘giving a damn what anyone else thinks’.

When not destroying her fans with her quick-witted venomous scorn, the quality dips a little as she hits a few bad taste touchstones: Anne Frank, dead babies, Santa being a bit of a pedo… But the way she belts it all out with weapons-grade ferocity and whiplash pace adds a phenomenal punch.

If it’s true that ‘you can’t say anything any more’, none of the hundreds of people who are howling with laughter in this room got the memo.

• Bianca Del Rio: Unsanitized was at Pleasance @ EICC but her run is now over.

Review date: 27 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance @ EICC