Geneva Rust-Orta : Born With A Bush

Nightcap (v.383)
Aug 15-27 (23.00)

Material: Delivery: Laughs:

Last year, fledgeling Geneva Rust-Orta broke her Fringe cherry with her The Second Funniest Jew. She’s back again this year with her pal Ian Levy in tow, after returning to her native land & working the San Francisco comedy scene. Bringing Ian with her, he begins the hour with a classic American comedic patter, delivering droll humor as he clutched his microphone like a last pay check. Surreal in substance, the fellow even made an animated joke about Neville Chamberlain, which was completely unexpected & kinda funny. A warm & wonderful youthful comedian, his presence in the basement of the Nightcap, & his accented speech, really did cast a spell over proceedings & transport us all to the comedy nights of ‘Cisco.

Then the awesome wee bunny that is Ms.Rust-Orta came to the stage & I could immediately feel the passage of a tear. She began so much slicker, giving rather much the same material as last year she has refined her presence & delivery & was a joy to watch. In a recent interview with The Mumble Geneva gave us the low-down on her developing set;

I’ve tried to move on from dark bitter humour to dark playful humour. There are still holocaust references and a lot of sexual frustration in my material but I also think I’ve loosened up. My show is about feminism, sex, and Jews and how I have known them in my life.

Geneva explores her muses with astonishing brutality; & even when she says stuff about the Nazis & the Holocaust – stuff that always sits uncomfortably with an audience – she simply plods on determined & unflinching. By the time she unleashes her uberfilthy, ridiculously ribald material of a sexual nature, you’re like its OK Geneva, we’re with you. Just towards the end she began to falter again, as if the nervous ghosts of 2016 had finally tracked her down, but this was a huge improvement on her previous stint at the Fringe. As for her future, you can’t rush genius & an idea of her final image is beginning to take shape on the roof of the Sisteen Chapel.