Laura Davis’ latest, densely crafted stand-up hour finds the UK-based Australian psychologically scrambling more desperately than maybe ever before, yet cautioning their audience against reading too much autobiographical insight into their thoughts.
Candid about the anxiety and darkness in their life, up to a point, viewing Edinburgh as a cityscape where time, weather and death exist in an indistinct twilight, the comic can yet crack wise about their singular night terrors, the consumption of their extraneous body tissue by nature and even indulge in a little whimsical weapon play. The discordant nature of their mind doesn’t ease the flow of the show. And their abiding message to reject pessimism in the face of overwhelming global horror can feel at best a little hectoring, at worst generalised obliviousness. But in sustained flashes, they’re absolutely brilliant and inspired, their venue-specific joke about a certain Edinburgh-based writer’s committent to transphobia the funniest thing I’ve heard this festival.
As ever, Davis’ thinking is deep and wide-ranging, as concerned with the import of ABBA’s lyrics as they are with Virginia Woolf’s legacy and lessons from The Art of War. Performing with intense, controlled impishness, despite the bleakness they often evoke, they’re an adopted treasure.
Laura Davis: Despair is Beneath Us, Monkey Barrel Comedy, until 24 Aug (not 12), 5.45pm