Being a So You Think You’re Funny winner comes with a fair amount of expectation. Will each new champion sink or swim, especially given the leap from a winning 7 minute set to an hour-long show in the space of a year?
Luckily for Madeleine Brettingham, she’s a natural club comic (following a string of jobs in the best comedy writers’ rooms). Warm, spiky and with quite the stage presence. If you didn’t know, you’d guess she’d been on the scene for an absolute age.
Legend, her debut show, is a love letter of sorts to her upbringing in Bournemouth and being welcomed into male-dominated spaces as an 8 year-old geezer. Touching on alcoholism, fragile masculinity and class, it’s a wide ranging, weighty debut with edge.
It’s a little rough and ready in places. At points, Legend does feel like a few club sets stitched together (impressive in itself given how new she is to gigging), and the ‘glittering grand finale’ does, quite literally, seem pulled out her arse, but overall there’s enough heart and skill on display to mark Brettingham as one to watch.
Already you can tell Brettingham has lived a life, and watching her grow into live comedy and her undoubtedly wild stories will be a future Fringe treat.
Madeleine Brettingham: Legend, Gilded Balloon Teviot, until 31 Aug, 8.20pm