Madeleine Brettingham @ Gilded Balloon Teviot

There are three types of woman you can be, according to Madeleine Brettingham: a slag, a karen, or dead. Absolutely nothing else, and certainly not a legend. Legend status is reserved exclusively for men – the rowdier, laddier, and more misogynistic, the better. Except? What’s this? With her swagger and south coast accent, Brettingham is putting forth a bid, in her debut hour at the Fringe, to be accepted into the geezer hall of fame. 

What geezers have in spades, as evidenced by Brettingham, is a slick confidence – their bawdy jokes are often so quick and punchy that they’re already on to the next before there’s time to fully register or begin to be offended by them. They are the grown-up Artful Dodgers (Brettingham’s idol) of the world. They're cheeky, quick, risque, getting something from you (in this case, a proper laugh, though don’t be weird about it). They’re arrogant, but not so arrogant to believe Ted Bundy is worth all the hype. They are, more often than not, called Gary. They love shouting ‘oi oi’ and high-fiving each other.

Don’t let all of that fool you. There’s obvious overtones of feminist discourse here – Brettingham is a smart geezer, after all, with a degree from Cambridge no less – as she overtly undermines some misogyny club classics. Is this a lesson in using the master’s tools to break down the master’s house? There’s something refreshing about returning to recognisable lad humour in a Fringe show – so long as it’s, y’know, not actually sexist.

In recent years, the pendulum shift from punching down seemed to result in a sleuth of sympathy-baiting dead dad shows. Don’t get it twisted, this is a dead dad show, but Brettingham is having far too much fun with her one-liners, callbacks, audience interactions, and some lovely subversion to dilly-dally in pity. What a relief. Please, Madeleine, can we have some more?

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Madeleine Brettingham: Legend, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Wee Room), 5-31 Aug (not 17), 8.20pm, £15.00/£14.00