Friday 9 August 2013

Stella Graham - A Pint of Stella ****

My friend Nik Coppin suggested that I go and see Stella Graham, another act performing as part of the Free Festival, in his words, "because she does some good stuff".

So I took a trip away from the busiest part of town during the festival, over the Jekyll and Hyde pub to see this one hour solo show.

I quickly discovered why Nik liked her! She's basically a female version of him. Likeable, with a great hour of material, focusing on growing up, being mixed race, relationships, being a bit geeky etc...

It's a daytime slot so the crowd wasn't as lively as it could have been but she still managed to deliver a full hour of very competent stand up and kept the crowd engaged.

This is Stella Graham's second Fringe, so she had plenty of material and didn't have to spend 20 minutes at the start of the show bantering with the crowd just to fill the hour! The material flowed well for the entire show.

Conventional wisdom states that most comedians don't get any real recognition until their third Edinburgh Fringe. In my experience that's when they start to pick one theme and do a full hour of comedy that's connected to that theme and intertwine the narratives in a way that impresses reviewers and comedy aficionados.

Stella Graham's hour is still a mixed bag of material, she hasn't picked one topic and made most of her material relevant to that topic for the whole hour - which could see her do even better, but it's still a fantastic show and she's definitely worth seeing now, as well as being one to watch in the future!

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