Comedy review: Fat Whore, The Assembly Rooms (venue 20)

By Kate Copstick
Published on 10/08/2012 14:43

Strangely, for a comic who counts Doug Stanhope among her greatest fans, Kristine Levine seems almost shy on stage. She has a sweet, sex kitten voice and a huge amount of charm.

Rating: * * *

She has a huge amount of everything, to be fair. Kristine has worked the graveyard shift in her local sex shop for 13 years and it is this, and her “three fat kids”, that inform much of her comedy.

There is wonderful back-to-basics, take-no-prisoners stuff here. Maybe I like her because I agree with her about rape and abortion. Maybe I like her because of the way she looks at paedophilia. Levine has not exactly had a fairytale life (except in the sense it has been pretty, er, grimm).

And she takes it all and heaves it on stage and it is always fascinating – death by masturbation, the anatomy of a girly blowjob and the man with the sausage in the “jack shack” (Kristine will explain). Her explanation of why snakes don’t poison themselves when they eat is a moment of parental comic genius. I got the feeling Kristine is toning herself down for the Fringe audience. I’d pay good money to see her let rip.

Until 26 August. Today 10:15pm.