one4review | On 04, Aug 2024

Jade Kelly is a comedian from Glasgow-way, and there’s a style of interaction with the world that is unmistakeably Glaswegian. Ms Kelly has it in spades. It is inherently good-humoured, but that’s hiding a core of granite, and heaven forefend you push the good humour so far you bash off the bricks. This all means that Ms Kelly is razor sharp at dealing with hecklers and, once she gets her eye in, will be equally good with high-school drama classes.

It does also mean that the humour might be a bit too brash for some, and her insistence on an answer to unwinnable dilemmas was almost deliberately awkward. While most of the audience I was in were mostly laughing, a few were pushed beyond their comfort into phone-scrolling. For the first show of her first run, Ms Kelly’s confidence and stage presence are strong and compelling, her planned material as good as her unscripted audience interaction. We got to see a good deal of the audience interaction in my show, the front row being made up of her proud parents and their friends, some of whom were dead set on derailing things. She seemed entirely unflapped, however, a good skill in either of her chosen professions.

Because of all of that, I’m not sure how much of the billed show we did in fact see, and so comments on the structure or pacing or content of the show will perhaps not accurately reflect the rest of the run. Regardless, Jade Kelly is a great stage presence with her own individual comic style and flare.

Reviewed by Laura

The Stand Comedy Club
17:40
Until 9th