Rose Matafeo @ Pleasance Courtyard

Rose Matafeo's Horndog is obscenely good

Review by Tony Makos | 09 Aug 2018

Misdirection works best when you don’t know it’s happening. Rose Matafeo’s Horndog starts before it begins as audience members innocuously play table tennis with a suitably outfitted host, but this gives few hints of what’s to come. Matafeo herself is an infectious personality, quick to self-promote and self-deprecate in equal measure, and happy to guide the audience through her various passions (and, erm, "horniness") for all things pop culture, including Franz Ferdinand, K-Pop and, when it's appropriate, Katherine Hepburn.

"These aren’t jokes, I’m just talking", she says, and if so then she’s a natural performer who’s obscenely good at this. The detours into stories about her awakening sexuality and brush with harassment are handled casually yet deftly, indicating a sharp comedy mind brimming with potential – such positivity and exuberance mixed with real smarts and stand-up chops are a rare treat indeed. Ultimately the show (and Matafeo herself) gets brasher and faster and louder and more manic until its premise inevitably becomes its own punchline in a finale which, really, you should have seen coming.


Rose Matafeo: Horndog, Pleasance Courtyard (Above), 1-26 Aug (not 14), 6:20pm, £6-11

Scroll on to read more of The Skinny's 2018 Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews; click here for a round-up of all the best reviews from this year's comedy and theatre programme