Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Kelly Bachman made headlines five years ago when she spotted Harvey Weinstein in the audience of the New York comedy club she was playing and called him out – something none of the other comics had the bravery to do. 

It cemented her strange niche as the girl who talks about rape in comedy.  As a survivor of several attacks, she’s bidding to reclaim the power and the narrative on stage, an admirable stance that she initially took to combat the prevalence of male comedians doing nasty rape jokes.

She’s not the only comedian to address the subject, but it has become central to profile and much of her material in this show, rather circularly, addresses  why she feels the need to talk about it on stage and countless podcasts. The question she wants to raise – but knows she can never quite answer – is ‘Are you a comedian because of trauma?’, while making sardonic jokes about essentially monetising her hurt.

It doesn’t need to be said how commendable her position is, but it can make the show difficult It’s also a hard show to review – for who is anyone to tell as rape survivor what to say about the topic? –  but I wasn’t sure what I was expected to take away from the hour, other than she’s happy to make jokes about her attacks as she is about everything else that has made her what she is today

On a straight stand-up level, her material is hit-and-miss, and when a comic tries to make you laugh at a rape-adjacent joke and you don’t, it’s awkward. It’s difficult to make all the gloom evoked by raising the topic go away if the gag doesn’t land.

Other than this subject matter, Patron Saint has no big concept or clever storytelling, beyond talking about her Catholic upbringing.  Bachman’s very much in the American club tradition of giving a couple of lines of information about herself, which she then cuts with a punchline, any punchline, which she often tops with a semi-nervous  laugh that her seem unconfident. 

There’s something about the quantity-over-quality format and oh-so familiar rhythm that sometimes makes this seem glib, whatever the subject.  

Bachman starts more generically with her childhood, although it’s certainly Not Normal for a child to be convinced she deserves canonisation because she foresaw 9/11. (Spoiler: she didn’t). And to this day she remains into various quasi-mystic things like tarot cards.

This side of the show, culminating in a cod religious ceremony at the end of the hour by way of callback, isn’t necessarily a natural fit with the other, other than being part of the same life story.

Comedy is a catharsis for Bachman, and most her gags are OK, if nothing special. But she seems caught between the two fully understandable urges of wanting to constantly talk about her ordeals and not wanting to be defined by them, a dichotomy that this show is not strong enough to resolve.

Review date: 7 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly Rooms