Fringe Comedy
Sarah Keyworth
Pleasance
Five stars
Gary Meikle
Gilded Balloon, Rose Theatre
Two stars
How do you avoid clichés and stereotypes when writing a show about gender? Apparently you think like Sarah Keyworth. Her debut hour, Dark Horse is a beautifully-crafted and exciting thing. All angst and angles, she hunches over the mic in the style of an asthmatic 1970's social club MC. The material is fresh, razor-sharp and wonderfully off-kilter. There's a killer comparison as she explains the best bit about having a girlfriend and some serious neck-swivelling when footballer, Pavel Nedved is name-checked just minutes after kick-off. Ultimately, Keyworth's show is a journey of self-acceptance. At school, her perceived boyishness brought all the bullies to the yard. At university, she attempted to conform and lived the life of a heterosexual woman. Now working as a children's nanny, she's committed to ensuring that future generations aren't weighed down with the same expectations of what it means to be a woman. Powerful, poignant and achingly funny stuff.
Until August 26.
A single dad at 17 and a grandfather at 34, Glaswegian Gary Meikle has enough gripping autobiographical material to fill his debut hour several times over. It's therefore disappointing that he chooses to share the majority of it through the medium of 'bantz'. Meikle would be great fun on a night out. He's great fun on this one - he just doesn't need to resort to smut and stereotypes. Not all women crave bath bombs and Yankee candles and the bathroom story is definitely TMI. He shows potential and passion though with a wonderfully real and raw account of actively choosing a life in care over an unstable home environment. There's anger and craft too in his refusal to accept praise for parenting whilst deriding and shaming those who do walk away. If he can leave the laddishness behind, there's real potential.
Until August 26.
Gayle Anderson
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel