That Abigail Burdess Edinburgh Review (from Chortle)
Abigail Burdess aka Mrs Webb aka one half of Bachman & Burdess from The Two Faces Of Mitchell And Webb aka… (you get the idea) is up in Edinburgh at the moment doing her one woman show. As she is of the female persuasion and is in the singular. Anyway, comedy website Chortle have reviewed it as as I’m not going myself I thought I would be lazy and post it here:
Abigail Burdess’s character show is the very definition of a mixed bag. Some brilliantly funny moments share equal billing with some tired old nonsense in a very scattergun show. For every old joke about astrology or sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend, there’s a brilliant Brit-rap in the style of Lily Allen or a great range of utterly inappropriate greeting cards. Her creations tend to be exaggerated caricatures, whether it’s the hippy Buddhist with strangulated vowels and indeterminable accent, the ruthlessly hard-edged Scottish businesswoman, or the creepy Leeds hoodie. But they tend to be pitched at just the wrong level, gratingly annoying rather than flamboyantly over-the top. Tellingly, the show works best at the extremes of energy: when she’s being absolutely outrageous, or quietly low-key.
At the bottom end of the spectrum, the modest character linking each sketch with quirky nuggets of usually hilarious home-spun wisdom from her grandmother is endearing. The trite mechanic is that she suffers a multiple personality disorder, and the other characters are figments of that, but it’s irrelevant. At the other end, the judgmental Brummie diversity trainer provides good un-PC laughs after a long build-up and the finale – a Bart Simpson inspired ventriloquist act that literally brings the house down is a riot, even though one of the central jokes (that it’s done in a burkha) isn’t entirely fresh.
Burdess, one half of Live at the Mausoleum, has just enough great jokes in her debut solo show for it to be worth a look. But she needs firmer direction, tighter editing and more of a sense of purpose about her comedy attitude if she wants a show that really stands out.
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
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