Who Am I?
Bridget Christie at Latitude 2023 - ★★★★
Review from the Suffolk festival
Written by Steve Bennett in Chortle on July 24th, 2023
Stuart Hogben
‘Give me a cheer if you’re a tofu-eating, Guardian-reading member of the wokerati!’ says Bridget Christie as she takes to the stage at the end of an almost exclusively female Saturday bill at Latitude’s comedy arena. These – it’s safe to say – are her people, eager recipients to her sardonic and silly set, mocking all that is ridiculous about a) the patriarchy and male privilege and b) herself.
The invisibility of women over 50 in the media is relentlessly, sarcastically mocked. She seems hesitant about mentioning her acclaimed Channel 4 show, The Change, which goes some way to addressing that – but maybe that’s false modesty, as it leads into a substantial chunk of material expanding on the ideas.
That included her ill-fated audition for a preposterous Muller Lite advert that seemed as much rape fantasy as yoghurt sales pitch (as she pointed out to the casting agents, costing the job – as she’s spoken about before) before moving on to her own menopause.
Wonderfully ridiculous segments reenact her brain fog as she becomes increasingly angry and frustrated with herself and her family for not understanding her as she grapples to find the right word or a particular actor’s name.
The convoluted way she strives to make the necessary neural connections is an absurd delight, combined with a clownish incompetence. Meanwhile, a device called a LadyCare Plus – a magnet that’s supposed to be an HRT alternative – already sounds ridiculous, so ripe for Christie’s daft exaggeration.
Before all this, we hear about her experiences of childbirth, in which she makes the horrific funny – including her own entry into the world, in which her mother risked her life just to make a snide ‘told you so’ point.
Righteous sarcasm runs deep in the Christie family, and there was plenty on display in this winning set: pointed, smart and stupid, all at the same time.
Review date: 23 Jul 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Latitude
Written by Steve Bennett in Chortle on 24th July 2023.
Filed Under: Who Am I?, Review