Sarah Keyworth @ Monkey Barrel
No trauma, no drama, just joy in Sarah Keyworth's excellent new show My Eyes Are Up Here
In surely one of the stand-out shows of this year's Edinburgh Fringe, Sarah Keyworth takes on top surgery – and entirely defuses a potentially thorny topic. There's no trauma, no drama, just joy.
Friendly and slightly goofy, Keyworth has the audience eating out of their hand immediately with genial chit chat about the 30th birthday spent with their tight-knit family. Keyworth's birthday sees them at home eating their mum's rainbow cake; meanwhile a friend celebrates her birthday with a lesbian foursome. Not Keyworth's bag: 'I wouldn't thrive', they say, eyes twinkling, 'just wouldn't thrive.' That twinkle is a key ingredient in the Keyworth magic, allowing them to go to some surprisingly edgy places with an audience not necessarily versed in queer culture.
One joke about the top surgery is actually pretty audacious and the fact they pull it off – to gales of laughter – is testament to what they have created in the room: an ideal, albeit fleeting, community of acceptance and positivity. Packed with beautifully crafted stories, the show is bound together with looped callbacks, which also work to emphasise the sense of familiarity and shared experience.
Describing Keyworth's intention as 'consciousness raising' may seem clunky but the objective is still an important one, especially given current stormy arguments around gender. Their cheeriness doesn't preclude some steel, mocking the hysteria of the debate in the description of their psychiatric assessment on Zoom; asked to prove there's no one coercing their testimony, they imagine a Drag Queen holding a gun in the corner of the room, resplendent in a dress made of tits and screaming for more (tits). Keyworth ends the show with heartfelt gratitude, the twinkle verging on a tear, as they celebrate their good fortune in being accepted and loved, while acknowledging those less blessed.
Sarah Keyworth: My Eyes Are Up Here, Monkey Barrel (MB3), 17-25 Aug, 1.25pm; Pleasance Courtyard (Grand), 19 Aug, 7.30pm; Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance One), 21 Aug, 10.40pm – all shows sold out, contact venues for returns