Comedy review: Wicked Wenches, Edinburgh

From this very same stage in August, Bridget Christie wonderfully barnstormed her way to the Edinburgh Comedy Award. Whether any acts at the first post-Fringe Wicked Wenches platform repeat that feat remains to be seen.

Wicked Wenches - The Stand, Edinburgh

* * *

The headliner, NYC’s Leah Bonnema, is a true force of nature on stage but her claims that she can’t abide confrontation leads to the conclusion that her central anecdote might not wholly err on the side of truth. The story of her surreal face-off with a threatening Eminem lookalike is a perfectly pitched tale of steadily increasing horror as she takes him down a peg or ten.

Ashley Storrie also recalls meeting a dodgy geezer in town, but this time she uses him for her own act of vengeance on some loud drama types while flyering for her mum (Janey Godley) in August. Storrie is an experienced and accomplished comic in her own right now, but she has certainly inherited some outspoken genes and isn’t afraid to frighten the front row with brutally funny material about the jealousy Glaswegians feel for Edinburgh.

Opening act Sarah Short gently nudges the show into existence with tales of stupidity (on planes and with cars) while chirpy jester Chloe Philip makes more comedic hay with her reminiscence of feeding a horse. It’s all held together by host Jay Lafferty who does her utmost to rouse a modest gathering from its slumber.