Rosie Wilby: I Am Nesia

A popular technique used in trashier film and television is to take an attractive actress and give her thick-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses, ill fitting clothes and a terrible hairdo, setting up a climax in which the awkward, undesireable geek is revealed as a ‘secret’ beauty. Rosie Wilby’s stand up set, entitled I Am Nesia, relies on a similar form of misdirection being perpetrated against the audience; they are willing victims, one and all.

Resplendant in white coat, glasses and goggles, boasting a boffin’s nasal tone and nervous snicker, she is utterly believable as an expert in the study of memory. Wilby, a science graduate and relative Fringe newcomer in only her third year, marshalls an identity so compelling that she is even able to expose its falsehood without losing her credibility – indeed, doing it a power of good when she exposes the bikini she has on under her labcoat.

Sexual innuendo forms the basis of much of Wilby’s matieral, and while repetitive nods to her conquests become tiresome, she sells herself as the naughty neuroscientist flawlessly, like some anti-Nutty Professor in the mould of Jerry Lewis. The material is too reliant on expositionary elements to get many laughs, but the theme of memory knits the performance together creatively and coherently.

Wilby’s development as a comic is incomplete; her confidence is easily shaken and her delivery drops off dramatically towards the end of her set. However, originality and a strong sense of character should see her the rest of the way soon enough.