Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Salien certainly feels like an authentic delve into Sallyann Fellowes’s neurospicy brain, as frustrating as that can sometimes feel as she pinballs around disconnected anecdotes, never quite getting to the guts of the story.She takes to the room wearing a silly UFO

hat to represent how she often feels as if she’s on a different planet from everybody else, thanks to her autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD and missing bit of hippocampus.

 Yet all this didn’t apparently hinder her former career as a police detective – nor did the fact that she’s the niece of Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.

As someone who takes things literally, Fellowes doesn’t get jokes – so comedian might seem an odd career choice, which she embarked upon later in life. But just her scatty self is the appeal, rather than any well-crafted punchlines.

Often we laugh just because of how wildly the show veers from one place to the next, though it loosely follows a biographical path, from never fitting in at school, to taking up acting (she failed an audition to play a corpse) and being accepted to Rada, but unable to afford the fees, and later coming out as bisexual. There’s a lot to mine.Fellowes – winner of the 2023 Leicester Square New

Comedian of the Year contest – says Salien is different every day, which is not a bold bit of improv, but because she can never remember it properly. Nonetheless, each quirkily told anecdote illustrates her peculiarities. Her lack of polish is both a strength and a weakness, as there’s no question we’re getting a genuine picture of what her life’s like, but a bit more discipline in the writing would be welcome, too.

Some segments work as nicely surreal vignettes, such as her falling in love with a ghost, but even by her standards, there are some properly odd interludes, such as using regular playing cards to ‘tell the future’ that don’t really work.

But the mood from this disarmingly charming Cornishwoman is gentle and strange as she tries to get to the bottom of her curious thoughts, but always gets too distracted to finish the job.

Review date: 21 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Underbelly Bristo Square