Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Stephanie Laing: Rudder
Stephanie Laing
Genre: Comedy, Experimental, Stand-Up
Venue: Underbelly George Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Stephanie Laing is a stand up comic and Rudder is her comedy dance show about balance. Stephanie has a history of falling over a lot, accidentally kneeing herself in the face, and finding she is in love with total kn*bheads. In Rudder she uses a mixture of stand-up and dance to talk about bodies, sex, the joy of learning a new skill, liking yourself, consent and healing.
Review
You get the impression that quirky and startling things happen to Laing quite a lot and she has an infectious glee when relating them. Like the fact that her new boyfriend is ridiculously handsome (she has brought an A3 photo to prove it) and she can’t believe her luck that he wants to be in a relationship with her. She seems to have a certain disregard for her own emotional and physical safety too, “This bit of the set has electrocuted me twice!” she giggles, balancing a metal pole on the wobbly stage curtains.
The pole comes in handy when she wants to stick up the ‘bears showing feeling’ posters to ask us to guess what each one might be – some are obvious (rage, sadness), others less so (constipated bear?). The feeling bears pack of cards have a use in teaching autistic children, or in Laing’s case, an adult how to recognise what others might be feeling. Her new love calls her a mermaid because “she doesn’t make sense on land.”
In between the observational comedy are 6 dances. Laing has a desire to forge a connection between her brain and her body and thought dance training would be the way to do it, like you do. You need to bear with her (no pun intended) on this because the dancing does grow on you and one bit (based on very sad bear, OK bear and finding happy bear) is emotionally affecting. The clown attempting burlesque is joyous.
Rudder feels like a work in progress, it has all the constituent parts of a great show but they aren’t gelling quite yet. Ideas are touched on and skipped over -they need more oxygen, blowing up to become a full balloon of bizarro comedy. I hope all audiences are treated to the goat gag which is laugh-out loud funny and a contender for the top jokes at the Fringe short list but for most of the set I was smiling inside. There are bits that made me feel sad as Laing shared the challenges with being autistic that she is in therapy for and whether there should be a sliding scale for rape offenses based on her personal experience. I dithered about which Fringe Review category to publish this under (Hidden Gem, Exciting New Work, Daring – all three) but in the end have settled for ‘Good’ because it is, comedic observations with some fun dancing thrown in, a laid back hour in a busy Fringe day.
