Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

With little of the naturalism of stand-up and oftentimes no urgency to find jokes, Angela Beevers’ one-woman show might sit better in the theatre section of the Edinburgh Fringe programme.  

But even so, her story of trying to create a eulogy that would do justice to her mother’s unconventional life feels flat, even cynical in its manipulation of poignancy. That’s most felt as the performer moves around the stage deliberately and wordlessly to the sad music that closes the show before signing off with a plea to ‘call your mum’. Or maybe I’m the one who’s the cynic, hardened by having seen grief informing so many more artful and amusing shows than this.

Beevers’ mother, Sue, who died in 2014, was quite the character. She was a belly dancer, a honky-tonk fiddler, a quality assurance expert on a bee farm and a psychic. But to her daughter, she was primarily an embarrassment, at least until the show needs a redemptive pivot and the performer comes to appreciate her free spirit.

For the show is more about Beevers than her mum. She approaches the eulogy like a drama-school showcase, with her as the star. Should she maybe improv it? Or do a song? That might help her win over a boy she likes, playing up the grief-stricken angle, like she saw on some corny, saccharine romcom.

You might need a reminder this woman fretting about getting a like for her Instagram post is an adult supposedly mourning her mother, not a teenager trying to snare a high-school crush. Such self-centred flippancy is where the comedy supposedly lies, but it undermines the emotional heart of the story.

Beevers also talks about her career frustrations as a would-be Hollywood screenwriter but getting stuck as an executive’s assistant for the best part of a decade because she’s so good at it (she now has assistant producer credits on Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head reboot and Silicon Valley). It’s her get-it-done attitude that apparently helped secure the best medical treatment when her mother’s cancer was first suspected. 

When Beevers is honest about the harsh realities of the illness, the show is naturally compelling, without the performative whistles and bells elsewhere, and she largely doesn’t try too hard to be funny. Where there is mordant humour in the darkness, it emerges more naturally here. 

Her mum’s final days also provide the comic highlight of the hour, when a priest visits to give the Last Rites, with an assistant Beevers portrays as a cackling witch-like crone. It’s surely unfair and exaggerated, but here a larger-than-life caricature contrasts with the seriousness of the situation to create a comic juxtaposition which Beevers misses elsewhere, falling unfortunately between being neither poignant enough to be heartbreaking nor funny enough to warrant more than cracking  a wry smile.

Review date: 5 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House