Edinburgh Fringe 2014
Sara Pascoe vs. History
Sara Pascoe
Genre: Stand-Up
Venue: Assembly George Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The past contains wars, witches, Kim Yong-Il and your ex. Your brain can recall being a child, while your body remembers being a monkey. Everything that has happened shapes who we are today…does free will even exist? Who cares! Miss Pascoe is here to amuse us with her joking!
Review
I like Sara Pascoe’s comedy, and the show I saw confirmed her as a witty and intelligent comedian who appears to share my politics, winner! Now, it certainly helped that the bulk of her show centred around discussions of female sexuality and ideas of non-monogamy, things I’ve also spent the last year reading about. I was therefore ideally positioned for Sara’s show, as I could nod along with much of her material, delighted that someone was making comedy from my thoughts.
Pascoe comes across very much as one of your mates, which is a very nice dynamic to have with the audience. Her style of comedy is to feel that you are just having a conversation with her, yes a conversation that is racing off on tangents and expanding in many strange directions from an original point, but one which does always come back full circle so you are not left frustrated that an interesting thread has been lost.
Her observational style of comedy centres largely around taking the piss out of herself and the things she does, which is engaging and makes you like her a great deal. Her jokes seem natural and there are no one liners or forced punch lines which is a great relief. There were also some very nice moments when she described the sex education she received from her mother, and how it led her to draw many ‘beautiful’ vagina pictures for the people at school – something which gave her the reputation of being a raving lesbian until she left many years later (obviously!).
Unfortunately, after an excellent show the ending felt quite weak and a bit rushed. Suddenly taking a tangent away from the main themes of her show she started talking about how she was never going to die and would reverse the development of the universe. It wasn’t wholly unfunny, but seemed out of context and a little bit tacked on, which was a shame after such a strong performance beforehand.
