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Edinburgh Fringe 2014

Clown Slut

Joanna Griffin

Genre: Solo Show

Venue: Dario’s Restaurant

Festival:


Low Down

Joanna Griffin gives a superior lesson in how to tell a simple story with many facets. This is a solo performance that makes you guffaw, have sympathy for a beanie boy you never met and head home for your leg warmers. 

Review

Joanna Griffin wants to dance. From her earliest memories she has always wanted to lift up her feet and put on those dancing shoes. There are some who don’t find it so enchanting and we begin with a scene where she is thrown out of a club for dancing too aggressively. This proves to be one of the book ends of the narration in between which she wishes she was born in the seventies, goes to school discos, navigates Fresher’s Week, sorts chafe for beanie boy in a masculine setting and becomes all grown up. By the end she realises that she will continue to dance as is her feminist right and settles to a life that may sound ridiculous but is actually serene.

What is most impressive about the writing is that it is geared towards an audience. You get the feeling that this has been tested out on people and whatever criticism has been given has actually been taken on board. It lacks the self indulgent nature of many solo shows that I have seen where I feel that privilege is in seeing the show and not the performer having the stage. The writing here is crisp and even.

On top of that Griffin is an exceptional raconteur. She had a Free Fringe audience gripped with her as she bashed and thrashed her way through each episode. We had titters to laughter built as we heard of the romance blossoming with beanie boy through the awkwardness of the tarty University dances. We were there in that room as she sorted her seventies afro, had great sympathy even from the start when she was thrown out for dancing aggressively and wanted the scene with beanie boy and his chafing to end well.

The big red box was her bag of tricks and it worked very well. Her consistent costume changes were a little off putting but each and every costume hit the mark – especially Wonder Woman.

It would not be an understatement to say that I really loved this show. In the spirit of the Fringe – which is not its sponsor – getting to see someone take a risk and risk it all – is what the Fringe should all be about. Griffin has captured the nervousness of growing up and gaining adulthood perfectly. She has taken the performance art of stand up and put it through a character to give us a performance rather than a comedian at a mic telling the stories. It works so much better and having that eye on the laughter as well as the performing charm she exhibits we are entranced. She takes us through the familiar as well as the unfamiliar with equal success. I have to admit to thieving a wee badge so that I could go around Edinburgh as one of the Clown Slut gang. I have no idea what that made me but being one of the gang was enough for a day before I could get home to get the stereo on, turn it up to 11 and await the neighbours complaining. 

Published

Show Website

Local Girl Productions