one4review | On 05, Aug 2024

This show is an example of why the Fringe is wonderful (the show is wonderful too).

Visual art isn’t really my thing. I can look at a painting and appreciate the technical skill, but I don’t really get much more than that. This show is like a live gallery-blurb, straight from the artist, and it brings something to the paintings that merely looking at them doesn’t. It’s an audience with the artist, who also happens to be articulate and thoughtful and reflective and able to talk coherently and vividly about her art, and where it came from and what she was trying to do with it. You don’t get that outside the Fringe!

Understanding the art is helped by the fact that Beth Knight is a really good painter. She was in her initial series of dog paintings, but there’s a bit of something extra in her more recent works that even the unenlightened like me can see. The show explains what that is and where it came from. Ms Knight is also a really good talker, generous with her insight and analysis, and genuinely funny. She talks about being playful in her visual art, and it comes through in her style of performing too.

Ms Knight was also generous with her show time, and we got a little extra mini-set from her friend and delightful fellow comedian Jodi Wheeler. The venue has sofas (!) and this lovely show, so it’s definitely worth walking down the hill.

Reviewed by Laura

St Stephen’s Theatre
12:00
Until 25th

The image belongs to Beth Knight.