When I was invited to review Frankie McNair’s London preview before her Edinburgh Fringe run I was warned that she might be jetlagged after just flying over from Australia. All I can say is that if this is McNair knackered I can't imagine what she will be like after a decent night’s sleep. Onstage McNair is a veritable powerhouse of pithy punchlines. She makes a tornado seem like a puny gust of wind.
Her show, Huge Ass Mindset, was nominated for the top award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival earlier this year and it is easy to see why. It is McNair’s inspiring story of how she took back agency and rebuilt her self esteem from rock, ahem, bottom to become the assertive person she is today.
All McNair says she needed was to adopt a ‘huge ass mindset’ which, to her, means go through life with supreme confidence. She advises everyone to do the same. Be the kind of person, for example, who walks into a room and immediately announces “don’t get up”. Someone who is absolutely bulletproof and takes no shit.
From a high energy intro and a trigger warning about some of the content, the McNair momentum never lets up, except maybe when there is a brief clownish interlude involving some light audience participation and a pair of googly eyes. But the meat of the matter is her account of sexual abuse at the hands of her father as a child, something she processes onstage through humour, trying to make incest – the pun must be intended – relatable.
As well as sharing her own experience she reveals some shocking statistics about sexual assault in Australia. Despite the subject matter, which also takes in suicidal ideation, McNair finds the perfect balance between tackling a heavy subject and making sure that this is, above all, a comedy. She jokes about the years of therapy, and the cost, but maybe it has been worth it.
As she quips at the start that this is no “dead dad” show because, apart from anything else, her father is still alive. But as with many acclaimed comedy shows, there is plenty of emotional heft here as well as utterly unexpected twists and turns. Adult life has not been seamless for McNair – she has ADHD, Autism and PTSD and only recently worked out how to use a salad spinner – but at 32 years old there is some closure and the future looks brighter.
Above all McNair is a compelling performer. The gags fly thick and fast, often accompanied by a comic sound cue. Interestingly she has a habit of shouting some pay-offs, which is not a million miles from the style of Sam Campbell. Who of course went on to win the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show. Could McNair follow in his footsteps? The Fringe hasn’t even started and this sets a really high bar.
Read an interview with Frankie McNair here
Tonight, buy tickets here.
Edinburgh Run, Gilded Balloon Teviot (The Den), Wed 5 Aug – Sun 30 Aug, 19:00 (60 mins). Buy tickets here.
Then Soho Theatre, Mon 7 – Sat 12 Sep. Buy tickets here.
*****
