Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose
Aug 8th–13th, 15th–27th
Dat Deus Incrementum
Hello again from the Edinburgh Fringe 2023. In a sense the great welcoming that is the busy North Bridge is almost like the entrance to a fair park. Heading up there is just a blessing of colourful culture, so was to come ‘Get Blessed’ by Niamh Denyer the show I was about to see in the very pink venue the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose.
On she came, this Irish temptress, without any sense of performer/audience separation I immediately felt motivated and encouraged, which was fully intended in her tactful use of a material of exemplary comedy.
Straight away it was obvious to all that we were being treated to a very successful act of a writer and performer who is winning prizes of good esteem. The joys rolled out as she relaxed the room and held the crowd, it was a smaller venue (thought not the Fringes smallest) of packed rows of seats. Her humour had many variants including some of its subtle jokes fast enough to be missed where only moments later caused laughter in its realisation.
She held a very real and sincere trajectory as her show unveiled itself as having to do with how we connect as humans who do funerals, and how we are so often sold on something we must pay for to get to the next level of burial processes. Her tricks melted in through gaffs and trudgeries with a wonderful vibrant enunciation and eye direction offering up a laughter that could suddenly spread like wild fire.
She was mocking things in life that we could take in feeling agreeable all for the good and right thing to laugh at (or with). Her power points (a new tool for comedy, well newish), explained things to a T and made all kind of sense with that underlying humour and ridiculousness, marrying being funny through being sincere with comedic poignancy.
It was all about how we lace things in the world so as to make all seem better and more right, moving along with constant participation (no separation) as the hero of the hour, I say hero because she absolutely challenged the business world with impeccable organisation.
Time itself was fun and flew by with bravo in Deyers hands and presence, where I felt she held a great sense of accomplishment from this theorem of the irony of human life. Perfectly written, timed and performed having a luxuriant flavour and flow as she plied me with a joy and forgetting of my surroundings yet wickedly placed us at the centre of things.
There’s no way to come out of her show having taken nothing from it, as long a moment of comedy as might be. No pretence and no corners cut but for me nothing but happy pee taking presented with assured comedy.
Daniel Donnelly
Mumble Comedy 