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There is nothing like a big build up to threaten to spoil the fun. Over a couple of days before I saw Adrienne Truscott's show, Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! it picked up a Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality and won the Foster's Award Panel Prize. Follow that. And she kind of does with a powerful piece condemning the culture of rape jokes.
I guess the fact that it didn't win the "normal" Foster's Award gives one an idea that this is not a "normal" comedy show. I don't think I've ever seen an Edinburgh show where a female performer was naked from the waist down. Actually I have, there was an all-naked stand-up show a few years ago, but it was frankly rubbish.
Truscott's show certainly hits the ground running, making the audience laugh, think and feel awkward simultaneously: "Anyone here been raped? Anyone raped anyone? Tough crowd." Having done a post-modern mock-strip, removing items to reveal more items rather than more skin, she then goes on to put the boot into male comedians - particularly Daniel Tosh – who onstage have appeared to make light of the brutal act of rape.
There is also political satire. She does a quick demolition job on a controversial US politician who made controversial remarks about rape. Truscott refers to the fact that rape goes on in nature - drawing on the example of male mallards who gang bang lady mallards (I already knew this because Stewart Lee talked about it in an old show – British comedy can be educational too).
There is no doubt that this is a bold show. I've seen plenty of multi-media gigs in recent years, but none where talking head are projected onto a woman's torso, turning her beard into a, erm, beard. Truscott, who is also a arty burlesque performer as half of the Wau Wau Sisters is not a full-time stand-up but this show has bags of humour and charm – she has likability to burn and as she wanders around the audience swigging gin and tonic from a can she makes the show even more intimate than it already is.
A couple of things did niggle me though. While she condemns the comedians who tells rape jokes, she seems to let the ones who have defended their right to tell them off the hook. Surely if she is being this tough, comedians who do not condemn these jokes are part of the problem. My second point is that she has been acclaimed for doing things stand-up comedians don't usually do. Such as - spoiler alert – a trick with a whistle that I could never even attempt. But there are plenty of people who have done edgy work like this in the more avant garde end of performance art, such as Annie Sprinkle or Penny Arcade, who was in the UK last year and ended her nightly show naked.
But these are minor gripes. I guess the reason Adrienne Truscott won these awards and not the main award is that her empowering show was deemed to be something special. And it is. I don't think it will draw a line and stop rape jokes any more than Ben Elton's career finished off Bernard Manning, but it should certainly make people think twice about rape jokes. And achieving that is definitely worth an award or two.
