Original Review:

Show Rating:

There's no smartypants title, no manifesto, no artfully contrived theme to the evening to peg the gags on;. Sarah has got the Aussie Girl Next Door persona down pat and her Edinburgh show has the great appeal of spending time with your really funny best mate. Her GND qualities were further emphasised tonight as she recognised a couple of latecomers as people she'd chatted to in Tesco the day before.

Taking time to set the audience at ease, she slips into her show with a few comments on festival madness and then moves into her anecdotes and stories. Her observational style is perfect for the comedy of social embarrassment and she shares her tales of not being quite up to the mark and constant the sense of 'what I should have said was' that we all experience.

Social embarrassment is the common thread to most of the stories, although they are not a linked (but there's a rather fine callback deployed), so among others, her subjects ranged across Bible reading, reality show audiences, childhood fantasies of superpowers, what's worse than Paris Hilton's new single and being picked for a racist.

The show is deceptively simple and you are coaxed along into a good time rather than bludgeoned. This gently paced but not meandering stuff and you could happily listen to her all night and if you pay attention you'll come away with some useful ripostes for those ego-bruising encounters with bus-drivers, teenage girls and everyone who's ever ignored you holding a door open for them.

Julia Chamberlain