Words With AL Kennedy

In the beautiful chaos that we affectionately call the Edinburgh Fringe, there are few certainties. After attending a number of shows, however, it quickly becomes clear that there is one word guaranteed to extract a giggle from an uptight, middle-class British audience. That word is 'Dundee'. Regrettably, this obvious and gratingly snobbish approach to humour provides some the biggest laughs in A. L. Kennedy’s show, and even then only from a small proportion of the audience.

Perhaps Kennedy’s monologue, which focuses largely on her life as a successful novelist, should not be judged on its comic content. As she flits between dull autobiographical insights and a few mesmerising musings on the power of words, she attempts to maintain a facade of sweet innocence in her stage persona. But such childlike enthusiasm quickly starts to grate and is occasionally wiped out altogether by a hefty boast about how wonderful it is to be a successful writer. By all accounts, her writing is rather good: in 2007 she won the Costa Book of the Year Award for her novel Day. One can’t help but think that she should probably stick to what she does best: writing creatively rather than announcing to the world her reasons for doing so.

Kennedy makes an important - if obvious - point over the course of an hour: words are powerful. It’s a terrible shame that she wastes most of hers on telling her paying audience how talented she is, rather than standing back and allowing them to work the magic that she is evidently capable of.