Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Louise Young has a past that could euphemistically be described as ‘colourful’ – though her wayward youth could also be cast as self-medicating mental health problems with booze, which sounds less fun.

She starts with a jokey section about the Geordie drinking culture, depicted on many a Booze Britain-style TV show, and it’s soon clear that she went to excesses even by those standards. She’s certainly no stranger to the inside of a police cell.

Young also had first-hand experience of the mental health crisis team, a lot less exciting than the action-movie name might suggest. Indeed, the paucity of Britain’s mental health provision is a recurring theme, as she describes going on an ineffective afternoon course on ‘how not to be mental any more’ - it involved some colouring-in – or the time she was sectioned, but just wandered away thanks to some very lax security.

This is all told very matter-of-factly, with Young a friendly and engaging guide through her own life, sharing tales that also cover associating with a thief – with an amusing image conjured up of him struggling to get away with his booty – and encountering a possibly homophobic taxi driver.

Young, a best newcomer nominee this year, can be a bit garrulous, though, with tales more conversational than punchline-led. Nor does the show have much of a narrative shape beyond sharing each anecdote.

The personable South Tynesider seems thrown off by the audience’s response, with us listening intently but with few rolling laughs. ‘Come on, guys, get behind me,’ she urges on more than one occasion. Her sign-off: ‘It’s not been that bad’, a clear indicator of how she felt the gig went. 

But the room’s reluctance seems to be a result of a too-loose approach to storytelling. ‘Oh you like proper jokes,’ she says, apparently surprised after getting a good laugh from one such line about being half-Geordie, half-Turkish.

That we do. For some stories, she only has to tease out the comic payoff that’s built-in – such as her spying on her depressed flatmate through his newspaper-covered window – but not all conclude so neatly. And without a more robust sense of purpose, the show never feels more than the sum of its parts, though Young always remains a warm presence on stage.

Review date: 28 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard