Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Harriet Dyer’s new show skates breezily over some pretty serious stuff, much of which was covered in previous shows, particularly 2022’s Trigger Warning. You can sometimes feel that history of darkness tapping on the underside of the ice, wanting to be included in the show, but for the most part Dyer keeps a lid on it during this long, diverting wander through her friendship with a woman she calls Chicken Licken.

CL was an older co-worker who Dyer initially looked up to, but the story of their friendship is a slow descent into a world where drugs are the only reason to do anything. Dyer focuses primarily on the wacky stories  regularly thrown up by such a lifestyle, but it’s with some relief that you feel her turn away from CL’s malign influence. She’s quite happy now, as it happens.

Throughout the story she explores several bizarre-but-true tangents, like the time she tried to check a penis out of the local library as a child, or accidentally signing herself up to receive one slug a month in the post, courtesy of Amazon. 

These sections are mixed up with some other flights of fancy that are more clearly fictional, and while I’m not demanding gritty realism from someone with as many fizzy ideas as Dyer, the more fanciful notions do inevitably devalue the currency of the real stories.

Taking the siesta slot in a hot room, she struggles to generate energy in the audience, although she has plenty of her own, performing at a mile a minute and constantly writhing in place. That the transmission of energy never quite takes place may be due to the hard surface she presents.

While friendly and warm, she never really interacts with the audience or responds to what little they’re putting out. You get the impression she’d be going on at the same rate whether there were people listening or not.

Still, comedy needs more voices like Dyer’s.

Review date: 21 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House