Rachel Fairburn: All the Fun of the Fairburn (Rachel Fairburn) @ Laughing Horse, Jekyll and Hyde

Review by Ben Venables | 27 Aug 2014

When stood beside a stack of children's colouring books, wearing a bright t-shirt and little red bauble earrings, it would be easy to be deceived by Rachel Fairburn. Add her expression of contentment as she talks about working in a library and it's easy to forget the old saying – it's always the quiet ones. Appropriately, the venue is Jekyll and Hyde.

Fairburn's family history is the through-line of this show, though it's perhaps more Angela Carter than Robert Louis Stevenson as she tells of her Great Uncle Charlie's funfair frolics resulting in a Gypsy curse. Fairburn's family history is of misfortunes great and small. From acrobatic accidents and her own sternum-breaking fall on a bouncy castle last year, to the dark shadow of a number of family suicides.

That t-shirt, by the way, is of a skull from Coney Island Fairground. Those colouring books are of pictures of serial killers. As a creative curio, these are suggestive of how Fairburn may develop her dark passions into a show of increasing ambition. She has a head for research and it'd be interesting to see her comedic take on more objects. The library where she works should inspire; it is where John Dalton's eyeballs are preserved.

While this would be a macabre episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Fairburn is uncommonly down-to-earth and this is a lovely hour of storytelling and lighthearted comedy. The bauble earrings are just bauble earrings – there is light as well as darkness.

Rachel Fairburn: All the fun of the Fairburn (Rachel Fairburn) @ Laughing Horse, Jekyll and Hyde, 1-25 August, 12:45 pm, free