Brodi Snook @ Gilded Balloon Teviot

Brodi Snook’s debut hour Handful comes from being called exactly that whilst on a date. This kicks off a show about bad relationships, self-sabotage and re-establishing who you are in the face of toxic men. 

Snook’s show gets off to a strong start with a hilarious anecdote about a weekend getaway with a guy she’s been mercy dating for two weeks. From here, we get an early taste of her trademark sharp wit and devilishly dark punchlines. She might have been mercy dating the guy but he was not spared from her razor-like gags.

The earlier material delving into past relationships gets poignantly reframed when Snook reveals that she has been enduring an eleven-month harassment case – something that’s affecting female comedians across the globe, particularly coming to the fore after the murder of Eurydice Dixon just before the last Fringe. She presses the issue well and makes some fantastic points about toxic men forcing their issues on women. This section is well-balanced with short asides about her own self-sabotaging behaviour, which she reads from notes taken from a bowl. Snook’s dark and direct style works brilliantly when tackling this subject matter and her smooth delivery early on makes the serious content at the end all the more emphatic. 

Although her harassment case is still being processed, it seems that through this show Snook is out to prove that she’s reclaimed the parts of herself that were repressed during her lengthy battle. It’s a super slick hour, well-written, well-performed, and well worth seeing.

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Brodi Snook: Handful, Gilded Balloon, Teviot (Wee Room), until 26th Aug (not 13), 8.15pm, £9-£11