one4review | On 31, Jul 2025

Outstanding. Sketch comedy with bite, brilliance and just the right amount of bile.

At a time when sketch comedy is being flattened into algorithm-chasing improv and tossed-off TikToks, Zara Gladman delivers something almost radical: care, craft, and scalpel-sharp satire. This is character work with layers — not just performed, but inhabited — and a reminder that when done right, sketch is one of the most potent tools in the comic arsenal.

Her creation, Aileen — a West-of-West-End Glasgow social climber with more self-entitlement than sense — has landed in Edinburgh on a so-called “fundraising” mission for her son Cameron’s gap year. In August. At the Fringe. Possibly the last place on Earth to come looking for spare change. But that’s the joke, and the tragedy. Aileen isn’t just funny — she’s uncomfortably familiar. We’ve all met her. Some of us may even be related to her.

Gladman doesn’t so much perform Aileen as breathe life into her. The character’s world is spun like a spider’s web: sticky, suffocating, impossible to ignore. This is micro-aggression in Waitrose. You flinch because she’s real — the kind of provincial posh you find at local galas, school fundraisers, or the person you silently avoid on the next yoga mat. It’s satire remixed for the social-media age, where status is a hard-fought Squid Game.

And just as the audience settles into the horror-show humour of Aileen’s world, the real Zara Gladman emerges between scenes — guitar in hand — delivering songs that are equal parts whimsical and genius. Her odes to football, mortality, trolling, and mums are worth the price of admission alone.

What makes the show soar is the sheer attention to detail. Every gesture, every clipped syllable is calibrated. There are echoes of Victor and Barry, of Dame Edna, perhaps even a restrained Partridge — but Gladman’s voice is undeniably her own, and unflinchingly Scottish. Aileen may be grotesque, but she’s never a caricature. She’s lived-in. And unfortunately, she’s out there.

A special mention must go to Stuart, the long-suffering accompanist — a Mozart-level pianist seemingly condemned to a cocktail bunker. His expression alone could anchor its own show. Add in clever use of VT and tech — often a weak link at the Fringe — and the result is an experience as slick as it is sharp.

“Tell your friends,” Aileen urges. “Gossip fuels the Fringe.”
Consider this your whispered tip: Zara Gladman’s Aileen is a monster hit in the making. And something tells me she won’t be confined quietly to her maisonette much longer.

****1/2

Reviewed by Steve H
Monkey Barrel – Hive 1
Various Times (1hr)
Until 10 Aug