August 13, 2026 at Pleasance Courtyard, Below
This show has a lot of buzz around it for a debut hour, though Harriet Richardson isn’t new to creative or performance-based work – she’s a performance artist, doing live stand-up comedy for the first time. The hour centres around an enticingly salacious story, which gets people through the door to hear the larger the message around performative identity, psychologically traumatic effects on women of our sexist and sexually objectifying society, and, most of all, the nature of obsession.
This is told through PowerPoint slides that show more specifics of real personal life than we’d usually get in a stand-up show; it’s a gossipy hour about the dangers of gossip, a comedian laying her life bare to highlight the dangers of doing exactly that. There’s something powerful just in the telling of this story, as it transgresses the rule that we’re supposed to talk about creepy men in the abstract, say that of course the behaviour is bad and it happens, but you can’t get into detail about specific instances, because that would be starting drama. Richardson gets specific in this story – she doesn’t name celebrity names, but she names just about everything else. She brings the audience fully into her world.
There are times when the hour relies too much on showing us funny things from internet comment sections. I give that more grace than I would in most shows, as it’s relevant to the story, and relevant context to the societal view of women that underlies the story. Also, Harriet Richardson is an online performance artist, and collating certain types of internet comments is probably a valid type of performance art, even if it grates a little when going for too long in stand-up comedy.
Part of the central story centres around the Edinburgh Fringe Festival itself, and it’s especially interesting to watch the show while immersed in this festival, feeling the intensity of its culture, and how that could drive anyone deeper into an obsessive spiral.
Dave Baillie