A Book For Her
Edinburgh festival 2015 comedy review
Ambitious Daniel Kitson, energetic Pippa Evans and chatty Jenny Bede play it their own way, while Bridget Christie rages and Sam Simmons gets personal
Written by Stephanie Merritt in The Guardian on August 16th, 2015
Full spectrum... Bridget Christie. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
Bridget Christie’s A Book for Her (Stand) is also taking issue with the fact that women pay VAT on sanitary products because they’re deemed ‘luxury, non-essential products, unlike, say, flapjacks, which she suggests women use instead as a protest. Christie, whose act is still fierce and furiously funny two years after discovering what she calls her “feminist comedian persona”, is well aware that periods are exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a feminist comic to go on about, so she turns her blistering ire on other areas of social injustice. The spluttering fury that has now become a familiar part of her act takes in Tory cuts and the tedium of the Labour leadership election, but she also wades into the minefield of race while hastening to reassure us: “Don’t worry, I’ve run this part past all my BME friends and she says it’s fine”, a joke that reveals further layers when she pretends the friend in question is Rachel Dolezal. Much of the material here is taken from her recent book, but there’s more meat and more original lines per minute in this show than in most others tackling similar issues. Christie continues to cement her reputation as one of the funniest political comics on the circuit.
Written by Stephanie Merritt in The Guardian on 16th August 2015.
Filed Under: A Book For Her (The Show), Review