“Not tall — but towering in presence, attitude, and sheer narrative pace.”

New Jersey’s Leslie Gold brings her new hour Tall Girl Energy to the Fringe — and the first thing you notice is, well, she’s not tall. Just over five feet, in fact. But from the second she walks onstage, dressed in a tomboy-chic ensemble that lands somewhere between Brooklyn barista and early-2000s Avril Lavigne tour manager, she owns the space. She’s got the kind of presence that suggests she could fix your WiFi and your emotional baggage in the same 10-minute window — with a YouTube tutorial on in the background, just for fun.

The title Tall Girl Energy is both a misdirect and a manifesto. Gold isn’t physically towering, but she performs with the strut of someone who’s spent years cultivating inner height — the kind you build from never quite fitting in. It’s a show about confidence, misperception, and how to occupy space in a world that’s all too happy to shrink you down.

Gold’s delivery is clipped and conversational — a kind of American-accented shorthand that loops and twists back on itself. There’s a glint of East Coast cynicism, now softened slightly by UK semantics, like she’s absorbed some of our national discomfort with feelings. She drops jokes veering from punchline to side-note to callback with enviable speed. Sometimes it’s a bit too fast — not everything lands cleanly — but there’s no doubting the intelligence powering it all.

Some of the best material comes from her life story: growing up Jewish in suburban New Jersey, and wrestling with the realities of being a woman in a world designed by and for men. Her bit about consumer products “not made with women in mind” hits particularly well — funny, sharp, and depressingly accurate.

There’s also an undercurrent of imposter syndrome that runs quietly through the show. From shoes that never quite fit to punchlines that double as confessions, Gold plays with that tension between presence and performance. One particularly smart move is the emotional drip-feed — she lets you sit with certain truths just long enough to feel them, but never long enough to derail the rhythm. It’s classy, and cleverly handled.

The show still feels like a work-in-progress in places. Not every section lands with the same clarity or polish, and the pacing occasionally sprints where it could stroll. But there’s real promise here — Gold’s voice is unique, and she’s got the chops to carve out her own space on the circuit.

She might not be tall, but the ambition? Absolutely skyscraper-level.