Comedy review: Susan Calman: This Lady’s Not For Turning Either, Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 300), Edinburgh

By JAY RICHARDSON
Published on 06/08/2012 15:29

WITH typically wry humour, Susan Calman bemoans her parents’ support after she came out as a lesbian, thereby robbing her of at least one angst-filled Edinburgh Fringe hour.

Susan Calman: This Lady’s Not For Turning Either

Underbelly Bristo Square (Venue 300)

Rating: ***

An assured and ultimately emotional return to the festival, This Lady’s Not For Turning Either stands apart from most stand-up here, with tremendous personal import for the Scot but also contemporary campaigning grit. Calman wants equality, the right to marry her civil partner in the same manner as a heterosexual couple and the freedom to play The Proclaimers’ Let’s Get Married at her ceremony rather than Darth Vader’s Imperial March.

Dismissing all the bizarre and familiar objections, the former lawyer instead offers a much more redoubtable argument for bigotry herself. If anyone still wants to marry her after this lengthy list of failings, cat lady eccentricity and Prime Suspect fantasising, then they absolutely deserve it. If there’s a flaw in her show, it’s that the convivial warmth and sprightly wit she so easily builds is compromised by such a clinically structured character assassination.

Anecdotes that are endearing in themselves are piled relentlessly, aggressively atop each other, the lady protesting too much among friends. For all that, I wasn’t alone in being floored by the ending.

• Until 27 August. Today 6pm.