Low Down

Gifted character comedienne Bridget Christie’s second romp through the great and good of the Restoration, as “channelled” through  Charles II.
 

Review

It can’t be easy being married to recently deified stand up Stewart Lee if you’re in an associated line of business, but that doesn’t seem to put Bridget Christie off.  Nor should it.  In the best tradition of character comediennes like Jo Neary, she provides a refreshingly ebullient and theatrical alternative to the relentless diet of boy dominated stand up that makes up the meat of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival.   Bridget has a wonderfully cheerful and winning on-stage presence, which along with her West Country accent, belies an incisive and unfailing ready wit. 

Her interaction with the audience, even (in fact especially) when it fails to produce the desired result, is superb.  “Someone told me I should get to know the audience but that’s obviously a load of shit.  I’m just going to bang the lines out!” Wonderful.  Her ridiculously overlong and rubbish “channelling” of Charles II (who proceeds to MC her cavalcade of characters) is one of my favourite things so far in this Festival.  In fact, intelligence applied to the art of silliness is her strongest suit; there is more than a touch of Bridget that remains in all her characters, unlike Jo Neary, her closest counterpart, who sublimates herself completely into hers. 

This Ricky Gervais-like quality of being able to convincingly characterise while maintaining a core personality is a fantastic comedic gift, as it provides a through line of personal insight and opinion it what would otherwise be a somewhat disjointed show.  Other highlights include the special guest appearance of The Plague, and Samuel Pepys heartfelt critique of blogging.  I haven’t laughed longer or harder all Festival. 
 

Reviewed by DM 10th August 2008

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