The third Women In Comedy Festival kicked off in Manchester last night. The festival runs until October 25 and features workshops, discussions and plenty of gigs, mainly around the city’s Northern Quarter. While there is maybe a chat to be had about whether a Women in Comedy Festival should exist in an era when gender-boundaries should be coming down, there is no denying that the Festival got off to a cracking start.
Susan Calman, who is also previewing her new show during the festival, was the compere, which gave her a great opportunity to road test some new material. On the day that Sandi Toksvig was announced as new host of QI she had some strong things to say about women on panel shows and it is going to be interesting to see how this material evolves over the coming months.
Elsewhere Calman (picture by Benjamin Halligan) warmed up the room brilliantly and demonstrated why she is considered one of the best MCs in the business. Her material is warm, self-deprecating and engaging but also subtly political. One minute she is talking about the theme tunes she has given her three cats, the next she is talking about her recent marriage - “upgrading” from a civil partnership.
The first act of the night was Annette Fagon. I didn’t know her, but she was certainly not lacking in confidence and has clearly done time on the circuit outside London. In fact she barely needed the microphone - with the added amplification she could probably be heard in Liverpool as she joked about white people doing their bit for Black History Month - mainly by putting money in her “Reparations” bucket that she handed around.
Fagon was very good at both talking seriously about racism by joking lightly about it. It was in-your-face comedy in terms of volume rather than aggression. She also notched up plenty of laughs with easier gags, particularly during a song in which she rattled off things people of a certain age remember - Snickers bars being called Marathon, phones with dials on them. I don’t think she got much money in her bucket but she certainly won a lot of new fans at the Frog & Bucket.
After the interval Kerry Leigh prompted plenty of laughs with her description of herself as a “latecomer lesbian” and I’d have liked to have heard more about how this came about. She certainly seemed to have an interesting background, having been born in the UK but brought up in Australia - she was particularly excited because her mother was over, which meant free babysitting.
I guess the lazy journalist in me would compare her to Zoe Lyons, but that is meant as a compliment. Like Lyons Leigh was smart and confident and able to keep everyone in the room onside even when she was being gratuitously smutty (and if nothing else tonight’s gig confirmed that women can be every bit as crude as men).
Review continues here.
