| “Unsentimental, Unindulgent , Humane, Vulnerable”: Izzy Rabey Directs |
Amy Mason: Free Mason |
| Queenie Miller , Pleasance Courtyard- Cellar , August 27, 2024 |
The description of “Amy Mason: Free Mason” read:“After an encounter with a wildlife enthusiast, the Funny Women Award finalist explores what it means to be a human animal (nightmare, tbh). Expect coming out in your 30s, rinsing homophobes and forming a coven with your kids. “The debut stand-up hour from the 'brilliant' (Bridget Christie) comedian and writer. 11 million views on TikTok. Heard on BBC Radio 1, Radio 5, Radio 4. 'Mason is so good; I was laughing before she said anything' (Bridget Christie). 'Endearingly off-kilter... one to watch' (Times). 'Absolutely enthralling' **** (BroadwayBaby.com). 'Charmingly poignant and funny' (Herald). ***** (WhatsOnStage.com). **** (List).” * * * * From Chortle: “Amy Mason bosses the comedy of the prosaic. Her calm, uninflected delivery places her vocally somewhere between EL Wisty and Pam Ayres, which is good company to keep. “It takes poise not to charge about, carrying on with jazz hands and exaggerated vocal dynamics. Her measured and warm manner is absorbing and holds attention, which allows the material to reveal its humour, rather than bludgeon you into a laugh with a 'boom-tish' clowny presentation. “This show falls into the comedy genre of ‘my mature personal development story’, which now seems more dominant than the traditional ‘let me entertain you’ stand-up comedy in the one-hour format. “The great thing is that Mason's deceptively simple style is finely honed, studded with unstrained callbacks and enviable turns of phrase which should enter the national lexicon. She can put a story together, develop it, populate it and keep it believable, wry and amusing. “She is unsentimental, unindulgent (where others might have indulged shamelessly), humane and genuinely vulnerable. Mason is open about the grind and indignity of having naïvely plain-speaking children, being good enough, coping with and achieving a dignified, respectful divorce, coming out to a husband, parents, friends and children and coping with her hard-won freedom to discover if it is all it’s cracked up to be. “To be sure, the mental health/neurodivergence box is checked, as in practically every show. I just wanted to cheer because it’s not ADHD in this one. These days, none of this is novel in the one-hour comedy festival format, but Mason endears herself to an audience with her restraint and skill in telling her story. By the end you want her as a new best friend.” * * * * From the Skinny: “Married with two young children, Amy Mason came out in her 30s, and had to radically remake her life. In her debut Fringe show, Free Mason, we see her making her way in a new world, perplexed by queer life and etiquette – rather like Jessica Fostekew in her questing, late-to-the-party exploration – but with an unblinking, deadpan stage presence that is distinctively her own. “She brings a bag of Doritos to a queer potluck party, and they sit ignored amidst the exquisite vegan spread, a metaphor for her own haplessness, a misfit amongst a new generation. Despite all the hyper-articulacy about sexual identities, though, an encounter reveals that the misreading of signals is still a problem – and she wonders if, for all the progressive language, anything has really changed. “Mason's great on child-rearing: the rapacity and narcissism of young kids, and the feats of self-control required, as well as the small satisfactions like secreting vegetables in their food, now more out of spite than any concern for their health. The parallels between her kids' demands and the fruit fly's peevish offspring is another delight. The kinship between animals and humans is a thread that loosely binds the whole show together – populated as it is with masturbating hedgehogs, moths, cows, sheep, and a dead dolphin. “Amy Mason is searching for her own particular brand of belonging, ideally a coven of sorts, and the show ends with a tableau of a particular kind of grubby happiness. Once someone who things happened to (marriage, pregnancy), there is the exhilarating sense in which she is now actively choosing her path. She is, finally, a Free Mason.” * * * * Extracts with thanks and acknowledgement from source: https://www.chortle.co.uk/review/2024/08/02/56198/amy_mason%3A_free_mason https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/amy-mason-free-mason |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
This review has been read 185 times |
