one4review | On 09, Aug 2024

Louise Atkinson is charm personified. She is warm and welcoming, building rapport with those in her audience right from the off – she is already onstage – so that they are already smiling and at ease before she starts into the content of her show, which is fundamentally about body positivity and her curviness.

The men in the audience seemed relaxed about what they now thought the show would probably be about, no doubt assuming it would focus on Louise and the women in the audience. So they do go along happily with her queries and her feedback too about their distaste for clothes shopping, and in one case one man explained that to avoid it he patches up his underpants. The audience roars and he grins, but not sheepishly doubtless because it is a regular topic for conversation in that household.

There is lots of fun and laughter before Louise explains her curves by highlighting her love of a pie and biscuits, and especially her enthusiasm for The Great British Bake Off and particularly Masterchef, entertaining us by outlining what as a Northern lass she could add to the format.

We are now settled and totally at ease, so in the right place for Louise’s disclosure that she has compulsive eating disorder, which is an addiction and therefore a mental health condition. But she sprinkles in humour so what could have been a tricky few minutes does not happen. And she challenges, as we all should, the objectification of women, and the convention of the norms of attractiveness and appearance, because she reminds us that we do all actually know that we can all be sexy in our own way and indeed that personality is so much more important.

The mood has lightened, we all enjoy a have a few more laughs with Louise and leave having had a very happy hour, a little wiser and with smiles on our faces.

****
Reviewed by HJ
Gilded Balloon, Patter Hoose – Coorie

17:00 (1hr)
to 25 Aug