Edinburgh Fringe 2012
Low Down
With a surreal introduction involving a war donkey and an inflatable ballerina costume, this is a very good and quite personal standup show.
Review
Bridget Christie cares about women, and her material is designed to highlight the issues she cares about through comedy, something that is very difficult to get right. She is a confident performer and this allows the audience to warm to her from the start.
Her show begins surreally, but after ten or so minutes she takes the costumes off and begins the standup. On paper her material isn’t cheery: Misogyny, labia reduction, death in childbirth; but it is delivered irreverently and interspersed with well timed comic relief that doesn’t undermine the point. She is a good reader of the audience and one gets the feeling she is sensitive to their expectations and impressions. The ending is hilarious and unexpected and feels just right in making her point hit home.
The two styles of performance do not sit perfectly however. Although she does well at explaining and transferring the slapstick opening in to standup, they are rather different in tone. The title and blurb of the show perhaps implies lighter and sillier content, and this only really lasts the first ten minutes. Not to say the next forty aren’t entertaining, but as the opening is very funny perhaps more could be done with it. Her material is well pitched and she has a knack of displaying her feelings towards her material without appearing ill at ease. It is political in nature and in other comics could come across as awkward or preachy, but not in the entertaining and talented Bridget Christie.
