She’s barely begun her show before it becomes clear that the camera filming her for the London producer who can’t make the live show isn’t working. She starts again – not that her live audience aren’t important but she just… – and the camera still isn’t working so she goes again.
Liz Kingsman launched her One-Woman Show on an unsuspecting public in London in the autumn of 2021 and it was met with a fervour of critical excitement. She’s now at the Traverse for the remainder of the Fringe and three sell-out nights in, they’re adding extra performances.
Kingsman’s routine introduces her as a twenty-something liberated, looking for love (or at least, a quick tumble under the bedsheets) well-intentioned kooky charity worker who unintentionally courts misfortune at most every turn. We see a day in her life as she hunts for meaning and meaningful connection in a world determined to misunderstand her.
Comedy routine tropes somersault for attention in her whip-quick smart performance. Her script is astute, sharply acerbic, silly and very funny and it’s gently directed by Adam Brace. You could see this show as a day in her life. You could see this as an elaborately layered pastiche of the queen of the eye roll to camera, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her hit show, Fleabag. And you might enjoy a thrilling little shiver at the Brecht-worthy meta musings on gender stereotypes, the entertainment industry and society’s continuing disappointingly narcissistic values system.
However you want to take this One Woman Show, Kingsman is an assured, likeable performer with a caustic eye for our ridiculous obsessions and – you suspect – a joyous appetite for laughing at herself. Her show’s finale arrives with a gloriously foolish flutter that audiences are enjoying so much that the Traverse have scheduled extra performances.