Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Given the immediate impression it makes upon an audience, the 'look' of a comedian, the succession of choices they've made about how they present themselves, isn't always given the scrutiny it deserves.

And then, sometimes, it's given too much. Seven years on from the slight, Louise Atkinson is still smarting at feedback she received after a new act competition, when she was told that she sounded 'good' but looked 'terrible'.

Without outing the insensitive critic, the aggrieved comic spends her hour unpacking that casually cruel remark, stress testing it against social preconceptions of politeness, professionalism, beauty, gender, sexual attraction, genetics, mythology and plenty else besides. As well as, perhaps most crucially, how it fits in with her perception of herself.

It almost goes without saying that there's a sexist component to the jibe. Yet from the age of the witch trials to the Tudors' adoration of a fuller figure, Atkinson points out how judgements about women's appearances have been inconsistent across history. And given that her simply being a redhead prompts some to overstep propriety, how can she expect sensitivity from clothing stores that label her oversized?

Appointing an audience member to track the movement of her trousers during the show, lest they ever bulge in the wrong places, the animated, demonstrative Atkinson initially affects an ease with her body shape, joking that it's a throwback to a period before feminism, when women were prized for their strength in necessary manual labour.

The self-styled Yorkshire Shakira, she's got a great line about their respective hips and is curious to elicit successful chat-up lines from couples in her crowd, inspired by the bittersweet examples she's received herself, which are mixed compliments at best.

But in relating her struggles with an eating disorder, she opens up a fresh perspective, one that effectively introduces mental health and even class to the conversation about body shape, rejecting the idea that she might be a junk food junkie. In fact, she's a committed cook and Masterchef viewer, delighting in the more pseudy contestants' showing off.

She will accept some disparaging of her self-presentation, admitting that while not being entirely fashion oblivious, she prizes putting one clothing item on backwards for the confectionery-based game she can play in it, while securing other snacks in crevices about her person. And there are occasions when misconceptions about her age have proved a boon with kind-hearted strangers on public transport.

Still, she's angry about the barely disguised euphemisms that clothing retailers employ to undermine larger women and extends her sympathy to men in a similar situation, even if she's damningly accurate on the basic clothes-purchasing psychology of most blokes.

Particularly galling is when her size and the more androgynous aspects of her look prompt erroneous assumptions about her sexuality, as she might be so lucky she fumes, doomed to the narrow parameters of heteronormativity.

Her thoughts on how popular narratives manifest villains as being deformed or unsettling in appearance have been overdone. But otherwise, Atkinson shows herself fully across the wider, current discourse about 'look', adding historical perspective when it helps to elucidate, even if it's her personal insecurity that drives the show.

Perhaps because of that personal aspect and the vulnerability she's often showing, it's not the easiest topic for an audience to engage freely with and sustain her back-and-forths with them, forcing her to hector sometimes. And she unquestionably barks and screeches some of her punchlines to afford weaker material greater heft.

Yet that might be what's required to push more sensitive, mature conversations about perceptions of the female body onto a mainstream agenda. And if Atkinson sometimes tips into polemic at the expense of gags, she makes her points forcibly.
 

Review date: 21 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House