Kayleigh Jones @ Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose

Kayleigh Jones’s debut hour I Fed My Dad to a Pelican has all the makings of a brilliant Fringe show. There are tongue-in-cheek songs sung with a ukulele accompaniment, a stuffed fish, some clever one-liners (which Jones hilariously insists on telling us are clever), and an unlikely yet entirely true tale about how she did, in fact, feed her dad to a pelican. Then there is Jones herself. She is classically trained, and her stage presence proves it. There is rarely a beat missed, or an exaggerated facial expression wasted, but alongside this 'musical theatre kid' energy is a self-awareness that Fringe shows of this ilk often lack. 

For, and it pains me to say it, this has been done before, many times. It turns out, if you’ve experienced any kind of trauma and/or have daddy issues, a Fringe show is a prerequisite. It must be daunting, therefore, to realise that you’re funny and talented enough to command the attention of a room for one hour but have little else to talk about than how your childhood messed you up. Jones manages to address the hackneyed nature of her show’s concept, most pointedly in a song titled, bear with me, Daddy Issues, and it is through this departure from what is now an overdone concept where Jones begins to shine. 

Pedantic, another one of the show’s songs, is a particular highlight and that's simply because it demonstrates some of the weird and funny idiosyncrasies that make up Jones’s character. While it's true that most of us have never and will never feed our dads to pelicans, we're less interested in Jones's past and more in her future as a musical comic – a future which we can say looks very promising.

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Kayleigh Jones: I Fed My Dad to a Pelican, Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Blether), until 25 Aug, 7pm, £10-12