Gilded Balloon (Venue 14) ​
Aug 13-16, 18-31
20:00

“I am a woman, hear me roar!”

Jasp

Morro and Jasp are a couple of Canadian clown-chicks who love to spread their own brand of tomfoolery out of Toronto & across the North American continent & beyond. Thank heavens they chose to share their consummate wondrousness with we Edinburghers, for watching their madcap antics is like having an Atlantic mistral wind blowing away the comedy mists from Auld Reekies joke-teeming streets. after an over-excited entrance, & bleeding from the crotch – they progress through pre-pubescency with an uncanny & accurate delight – something I confirmed with a female member of the audience after the show.

They drag us giggling & sulking into the devastatingly dramatic world of the female teenager, through a worry-fraught dreamscape of cheesy slow songs & bottom-touching at the prom, De Caprio worship (pre-dad-body), the cross-listing of the school hotties, & the show’s central theme – a girl’s first menstruation. This is some brilliantly funny stuff, especially the starting-my-period party thrown by Morro in which a member of the audience was given a girly makeover. After the wild ending, I was the last to leave the theatre & took a glance at the carnage on stage left by the girls: toilet-roll strewn everywhere, make-up materials mixed up with tampons tossed about without abandon… absolute chaos! But then I realised that throughout all that madness the girls had kept a cool & ingeniously professional head, a natural freshness that we in the audience felt was being played out for the first time. FOUR STARS

Reviewer : Damo Bullen