Comedy Review: Maisie Adam: Hang Fire, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh

Only the most clairvoyant could have predicted Maisie Adam's stand-up career from her overplaying her part as a wise man's wife in her school nativity.
Since her Nativity scene days, Maisie Adam has been a star worth following.Since her Nativity scene days, Maisie Adam has been a star worth following.
Since her Nativity scene days, Maisie Adam has been a star worth following.

Maisie Adam: Hang Fire, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh * * *

Yet even at that age, the precociously talented Yorkshirewoman was attracted to drama. Some comics strive to find inspiration for their show, while others simply stumble across buried family secrets. Droll and personable, Adam pays tribute to her loving upbringing from her parents, qualifying it with the truism that we all make mistakes.

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Offering some entertaining examples of scrapes of her own creation, from a one-night stand gone awry in New Zealand, to the teenage house party she artlessly failed to cover up, the key factor for her is whether the condemned acknowledge their mistake.

Facilitating Adam's story is a game of guess-the-felony, as she shares a succession of celebrity mug shots, finding mitigating circumstances for the perpetrators and not a little admiration in how they styled out their disgrace. When her coup de théâtre arrives, it's perhaps not as surprising as her intervention in Bethlehem all those years ago. But it's undeniably a talking point and could have been considerably more so if events had transpired just slightly differently.

Until 26 August

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