| Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh
Since her last show, about weightlifting, the 39-year-old has split from her son’s father and moved in with a woman. Which adds up to hilarity for the audience if not the comic For all the challenges that must come with redefining your sexuality in middle age, if you’re a comedian you can at least get material out of it. Since her breakout 2019 show Hench, Jessica Fostekew has split with the father of her son, and begun a same-sex relationship. This experience of switching lane halfway through life’s journey permeates her new show, which speaks with the freshness of perspective you get from suddenly becoming one thing after 39 years of being another. It’s not a set with the polemical punch of Hench, which staked out space for women to be muscular. This follow-up, entitled Wench, finds Fostekew in more equivocal mood: a section on the modern near-ubiquity of plastic surgery is even-handed when one expects Fostekew to let rip. Such is the humility, perhaps, that comes with a blindsiding life change – and with age, too. Fostekew is just at that point where you start feeling displaced by the behaviours of a younger generation, sending one another dick pics (to cite her own examples) and peeing without the slightest concern for who might overhear. Continue reading... |
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