EDINBURGH is being invaded by middle-class students hoping their dire fringe shows will lead to comedy or acting success. Here Charlotte Phelps outlines her slightly nauseating plans.
What I love about the Fringe is the energy, the creativity, the anarchy, and of course offering a career path with the earning potential of a senior management role at a top blue chip like KPMG.
I’m here with my one-woman comedy show Menstruation Nation. It’s about the conflicting pressures on a modern woman trying to live up to her feminist principles in a society that only values attractive, confident, well-spoken people who went to St Paul’s Girls’ School like me.
The show’s brilliant conceit is that my character’s period is her competitive best friend. It’s hard to represent a period on stage, so I just use a red spotlight whenever I’m in the role of Elizabeth’s menstrual blood. My friend Persephone said it was ‘very relatable’.
I’ve had a love of performing since an early age. ‘Christ, will you stop bloody showing off, Charlotte?’ my father used to joke. I wouldn’t, and here I am now with a successful Edinburgh show with audiences of up to four people a night – some of them partially sober!
I intend to follow an established career path of winning the Perrier, getting a TV show no one likes except The Guardian because it’s about a woman, then branching out into drama. Comedy is in my blood, but obviously I’d sack that off PDQ because film’s where the real money is.
The only bump in the road I’ve encountered so far on my journey to a massive house in Primrose Hill is the reaction to the show itself, which hasn’t been as universally positive as I’d have hoped.
‘Suffers a fundamental problem for a comedy of not being in any way amusing,’ said The Scotsman. ‘I’ve had funnier colonoscopies than this bucket of putrid shit,’ said Time Out in an uncharacteristically harsh review, no doubt written by a member of the patriarchy.
I’m not letting it deter me though. With some ruthless networking and self-promotion I’ll still be on TV in a few years with a toe-curlingly unfunny show that’s actually physically uncomfortable to watch. I’m just one of those people you can’t keep down, unfortunately.
