Amy Gledhill: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster review – bawdy comedy delivered with a blush

Amy Gledhill: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster review – bawdy comedy delivered with a blush

Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh
This show about body image doesn’t always hold its focus, but Gledhill has a winning mix of northern mockery and good cheer

‘I’ve had some good news, I’ve had some prosecco.” Today’s performance finds Amy Gledhill in a celebratory mood, with good reason: she’s just been nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award. You can see why: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster is an endearing hour of autobiographical comedy, just about unified by its engagement with the issue of body image, as Gledhill finds herself single and weighing up her value in the dating market. If there’s something indefinite about that theme, the Hull native keeps her audience warmly onside as this or that indignity is addressed with blunt northern mockery and good cheer.

Maybe that cheer is in shorter supply than in her 2022 debut. Fair enough: amid the dappy material about Toby Carveries and dangling from a tree at Go Ape, there are troubling stories, too – about a hurtful letter from a boyfriend that’s haunted her, and latterly, about a sleazy assault on a train. They are included here to illustrate not so much body dysmorphia (à la Hannah Platt’s elsewhere on the fringe) as body uncertainty, as Gledhill struggles to describe herself, and considers how others describe her. (“You look so … bubbly!”)

At Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh, until 25 August

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