48 Below

Aug 11-15 : (00.30)

PWYL

Material :  Delivery :   Laughs : 

Watching Geneva Rust-Orta’s first ever performance at the Edinburgh was a bit like gazing at  a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch. There is genius there, clearly she has the gift for comedy, but her youth & her inexperience still dominate both performance & material. She is only 21, and although her patter is of a woman twice that age, her life experience is such that is a scanty bed-soil from which to feed her talented eye for fun. Credit where credit is due, however, she’s only been doing comedy 9 months – a recent graduate in theatre down Yorkshire way, her end-of-year show had comedy elements in it, & her tutor suggested a spot at  the Edinburgh Fringe. The spot she got was at half-past midnight, & trust me some of her stuff really does need to be on this late – she’s a bit, well, ‘open’ & a bit too ‘raunchy’ for anything earlier – but its all, well, rather hilarious.

Before arriving in Edinburgh, Californian Rust-Orta has already been pronounced as the UK’s second funniest Jew. Checking this & other stereotypes with a  cheeky grin, Rust-Orta offers a unique insight into life, with realism rising out of every breath.  A romantically-minded, comic poetess trapped in a neo-modern cage, I have a funny feeling that if Geneva sticks at it, her place in the comedy pantheon is assured, & her juvenilian sketches grow into a masterpiece even Da Vinci would have been proud to call his own.

Reviewer : Damian Beeson Bullen