This is one of those Russian doll sort of shows, that pretends to be one thing but is actually something else.

 

Bella Hull starts with a very clever trick that’s such a good idea I’m amazed no one has ever thought of it before.

 

She kicks off with some skilful crowd work about dating and marriage – and portrays herself as a perpetual underdog who has found her community in the rough and ready world of stand-up comedy.

 

She has some excellent stuff about how much she wishes she could be part of the cool comedy crowd. But actually she is. She’s one of the Saturday Night Live UK gang, which at this year’s Fringe is about as cool as it can be.

 

She’s also not as much of an underdog as you might think – having once been a member of the Cambridge Footlights – that hothouse for emerging comedy talent. (I only know this by means of the internet – it isn’t mentioned in the show.)

 

Bella Hull is messing with us. She’s showing us how people underestimate women, particularly those with pleasant symmetrical faces and interesting mixed ethnic origins.

 

She’s been doing stand-up since she was 17 and has a real love for the artform. And she wants to be very good at doing it.  The ambition, I think, is real.

 

I like the sections on her family – on the sort of bonkers texts she gets from her mother and the inventory of strange stuff her grandmother keeps in the attic.  It would be good to have a bit more emotional sincerity amid the trickery but what she does share is playful, funny and well told.

 

Her final act is another trick and a hilarious and unexpected bit of prop comedy that links to the set up at the beginning.

 

It leaves you with a brilliant subversion of incel culture and a superb visual take down of the manosphere.

 

Women, Bella Hull reminds us, have had a great deal of power all along.

 

 

 

****