Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Can you create good comedy if you’re living a relatively comfortable drama-free life? That’s the premise of Susan Riddell’s sophomore Fringe show.

‘It’s hard being a comedian when you’re as boring as me,’ she asserts. However, the rest of the hour proves that to be false modesty, as the Glaswegian offers a solid hour of stand-up drawn from her everyday life.

And despite her protestations, she has plenty of things to talk about, from a mouse infestation – which she couldn’t properly address because of her sympathy for the vermin – to co-parenting a dog with her ex. There’s always a demand for the accessible comedy of everyday experience.

Being on the dating apps proves especially fertile ground. Although it’s not a groundbreaking subject, Riddell gets laughs from picking apart the specific horrors of each platform, from the Slim pickings of Tinder to the desperate mountain-climbing men of Bumble to the ‘cult-like’ weirdos into their spirituality she encounters on Hinge.

A no-nonsense type of lass, Riddell has no truck with the transcendental, and an amusing running joke is how the Dalai Lama is a prick. And she’s even got a game show to prove it. Less effective is her take on the Headspace mindfulness app which brings Living My 2nd Best Life to an anticlimactic end.

But an hour in her friendly company is an easy-going pick-me-up. There may not be any significant trauma to discuss, but she’s got a winning conversational style, with a mischievous glint rarely far from her bright eyes. When she invites several women in the audience to come out for a drink after chatting to them from the stage, you absolutely believe her – and that once there, she would continue to hold court in exactly the same entertaining, unpretentious way.

Review date: 30 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Niddry St)