Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The world of yoga is pretty easy to parody with its unorthodox poses and smug yummy mummies pretentiously embracing ‘spirituality’. But thankfully, Kathryn Haywood only dips her toes into those clichés in a show that should appeal beyond the ready-made audience her topic will inevitably attract.

Instead, she goes in a different direction, taking her cue from three genuine instructional books from the 1960s, written by Nancy Phelan and Michael Volin. They have not aged well. Despite being written for women and (partly) by a woman, these guides are grotesquely sexist and ageist.

Their message to their readers is that there are only four things wrong with them – their face, figure, brain and mood – putdowns that are delivered in the harshest possible terms. Only yoga, they suggest, can prevent one becoming a ‘dull and pathetic old woman’. Charming.

The appalling opinions are laughable in themselves, but Haywood presents them well, with her only slightly exaggerated Australian alter-ego always excellent to watch. She’s good at crowd work, too, even with would-be scene stealers in the audience, and is a maestro of the side-eye, saying so much with just a pointed expression.

Although she starts the gig upside-down, Haywood adheres to the expected contradiction that she’s neither as good at yoga as an instructor ought to be, nor the oasis of zen that its spiritual element should engender.

In this, she isn’t entirely above easy laughs, with the occasional joke about flatulence, backside-in-the-face physical gag, or telegraphed double entendre, but they are all lifted by her character’s sly smugness, laughing at her own joke.

Directed by Dan Mersh of much-missed comedy trio The Trap, Yoga & Sex... For Women (Over 40) certainly does Haywood great service as a performance calling-card. 

Her persona moves seamlessly from bitchily passive-aggressive to subtly vulnerable, while maintaining a deadpan as she coveys the books’ primitive attitudes as if they were gospel, the reality only slowly dawning on her.

Text interruptions from an internet date and a pal offer a bit of subplot and an excuse for gags about predictive text. They are fairly insubstantial, but do help set up a denouement to make it feel the show is heading somewhere.

Even though the antediluvian 1960s attitudes are easy to mock, the show has something to say about the modern-day beauty industry, and the judgements that still exist. But that’s for us to understand, Haywood never labours the point in this crisp one-woman piece.

Review date: 3 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just the Tonic at The Mash House