Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Flying in the face of the trad wife movement, Dr Jo Prendergast champions herself as The Cool Mum, the latest in a long line of charlatan self-help svengalis gracing the Fringe with their Snake Oil advice.

However, like Al Murray and Stewart Lee, it's sometimes a little hard to tell where the real Prendergast ends, and her deluded alter-ego begins.

For example, it's legitimately cool that Prendergast, an established comic, qualified psychiatrist and author in her native New Zealand, got into comedy at the ripe old age of 48. Although the unkind might see the cartoonishly heightened character she adopts as an almighty protective shield.

And, unless I'm severely underestimating the acting abilities of all involved, the show features her actual teenage son and a daughter in her early twenties.

In less likeable,  less engaging hands, this breezy festival debut would actually be lame, as Prendergast dabs, embraces TikTok and spouts teen slang as an irrepressibly upbeat 50something. But the notion of teaching a seminar on how to be cool from the perspective of a mum is  so patently uncool that it just about comes full circle and must be cool right?

The character offers a never-ending stream of positively slanted, unwitting testimony, unable to comprehend that she's cramping her offsprings' style. But what would be monstrous behaviour in real life, certainly amounting to cyberstalking and frightening off her kids' prospective partners, carries just about enough well-observed relatability for anyone who's grown up in a sometimes suffocating family, which is to say almost everyone.

With her daughter an eye-rolling parent to her parent – think a Kiwi version of Saffy and Eddie in Absolutely Fabulous –   a brief chink in the facade is revealed when Prendergast suggests that her eldest has just flown the nest, a more credible emotional pang than the fact that her children are sensibly not engaging with her on social media.

Her son is presented as a mute, occasionally grunting presence in the background. And it's impossible to tell whether that's an accurate summary of his personality, lazy stereotyping about teenage boys, his unwillingness to appear in his mother's show, or some combination of all three. Such is Prendergast's chipper charisma that it's only afterwards you wonder where the father is, motherhood being the be-all and end-all in Prendergast's world.

Related in the classic PowerPoint spoof guru style, with branded T-shirts and appreciation for volunteers hauled up on stage, it's not completely beyond the parameters of the most narcissistic wannabe therapists flogging their advice on the internet.

The show comes in a little short at 45 minutes and includes the odd bit of substantial filler, such as a rather laboured exploration of teenage attraction, hackneyed in its wildlife documentary parody. Even here though, it's endearing to see all these kids good-naturedly mucking in to help her out.

Crucially, Prendergast never once acknowledges the slimness of her premise, never offers a wink to the audience that she's not fully invested. The closest she comes is decking out a 'Cool Dad' from the crowd in such a way that he resembles the Steve Buscemi 'How do you do, fellow kids?' meme from 30 Rock.

Slight but fitfully amusing, the interplay between the stage and screen makes the character seem like it might be better suited to the endless self-reflexivity of the internet. Nevertheless, Dr Jo unquestionably captures the loving intensity of a mother who can't let go. And, bizarrely, is weaponising and monetising her maternal affection to do so.

Review date: 1 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House