one4review | On 10, Aug 2019

 

Jojo Sutherland has been described as the Grande Dame of Scottish Comedy by some and it has been five years since she did her last full length Edinburgh show. The very personal hour she delivers for Fringe 2019 proves beyond all doubt that she has lost none of her expertise in the interim.

For the first 14 years of her life Jojo lived in a castle with her posh yet eccentric parents, and then it all changed. Overnight they moved into a caravan with no room for the tapestries and no Aga! Not that this phased her, she felt more at home with the normal folk she integrated with at school anyway.

The bases set, Jojo leads one and all on a whistle-stop journey through her life to date, parental deaths, marriage, kids, divorce, a brain haemorrhage, financial hardships and of course her comedy. There is always time to laugh at the bad things, yet no definitive period as to when the time is right to do so. Funeral planning, hangovers and the questioning of some aspects of the law.

This leads onto what is the most personal and probably traumatic section of the hour. Ms Sutherland relates a serious family story, and no spoilers are coming from me, she does it definitively better than I ever could, a story so poignant and soul baring it just has to be witnessed. And leads to the question would the outcome have been the same had her circumstances not changed when she was 14?

A show that should not be missed.

4.5 ****

Reviewed by Geoff

Gilded Balloon Sportsmans

16.15 to 17.15

Until 26^th