Comedy review: Wicked Wenches, Edinburgh

For anyone who thinks female comics aren’t capable of dabbling in the filth in which their male counterparts often appear to revel, a trip to this month’s Wicked Wenches would have been a sobering experience. As the countdown to Hallowe’en begins, a few horror stories are wantonly aired this evening.

Wicked Wenches - The Stand, Edinburgh

* * * *

Fern Brady is developing a potent identity with her gravelly attacks upon the delicate boundaries of modern taste. Her take on the perils of binge drinking at home with a functioning laptop nearby is complemented by her working through some “anger issues” with a fearsome originality and a torrent of arresting and disturbing imagery.

The bright-eyed enthusiasm of Katia Kvinge was welcome as she pored over her confused heritage of half-American, half-Norwegian, while the normally brusque host Julia Sutherland became the pussy cat of the crew with potentially bleak recollections of the days when she was six stone heavier almost coming across as light relief.

Headliner Bethany Black was left to merely tap in the open goal of gore which had been laid into her path by the previous acts and she gleefully grabbed the opportunity with memories of her misspent twenties and the nitty gritty of modern relationships.

In the past, Black has not always looked especially happy to be on stage, but here she delivers her morbid tales with a cheery abandon which helped drag them out of the mire and into a place of amusement and delight. Rarely has a Wicked Wenches bill so lived up to its title.