Comedy review: Anna Drezen: Okay Get Home Safe!, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Anna Drezen: Okay Get Home Safe!, Pleasance Courtyard * * *
The New Yorker claims this isn't going to be one of those poignantly sad stand-up shows in which she discloses her trauma. But the signs are ominous. A wannabe actor of considerable privilege, she studied at RADA and was romantically affected by a stage combat instructor, despite her future typecasting requiring little swordplay. So far, so self-mocking. But she then introduces a device of cutting to spoof commercial whenever hinting at something darker.
A self-defence mechanism and satire on the news machine's packaging of the horrific and trivial, it's deliberately jarring. Digging into serial killers' attractiveness, her self-esteem and society's mixed messages for female sexuality, there then follows the funniest, most comedy club-ready section of the show, Drezen's admission of her “trash DNA”. Disturbingly, it feels like she might be setting up some genetic victim-blaming though. And when her denouement drops, it's a doozy, an ending that's narratively logical, yet inexplicably perfunctory in closing a comedy hour. And as Drezen testifies in aside, you know you're not getting the whole story.
JAY RICHARDSON
Until 25 August