Ignore the picture on this page. After it was sent out to promote Jayde Adams' latest show the former Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer nominee had her big hair hacked off. She currently sports an orange cut evoking David Bowie in his The Man Who Fell to Earth period. Which is appropriate. Bowie was famous for reinventing himself and that's what Adams has done in The Ballad of Kylie Jenner's Old Face.
As she explains after walking onstage in a black polo neck and trousers she has also ditched the loud costumes and dropped the songs in order to be taken more seriously. These things were her armour onstage and she wants to do a show without them. A show about feminism. Because, she jokes, there are so few shows about feminism on the Fringe.
So this is a very different Adams and a very different show for her, in which she explores body fascism and how Beyoncé, for example, might not quite be the feminist role model she thinks she is. It's all very well strutting around onstage but why is she letting Jay-Z grab her from behind? In what way is that empowering? Adams attempts to recreate the pose, which is living dangerously – she is already using a walking stick from a previous injury.
The thing that hasn't changed about Adams is her sharp sense of humour. With the aid of well-chosen screenshots she cannily critiques the way young women are pressured into thinking they have to look a certain way. The titular Kylie Jenner, she suggests, is hardly a shining beacon of modern, free-thinking womanhood even if she is a self-made billionaire. It's not a particularly profound insight but Adams has the ability to sugar the pill and get her ideas across onstage in a style that is both accessible and funny.
She has always been honest and that candour remains. Firstly in a story about being trolled by Little Mix fans after commenting on them and particularly in an anecdote about going out to dinner in a posh Parisian restaurant with her partner where she is treated with withering, unspoken contempt by the staff. It's a damning indictment of the way people are constantly judged on their class and their appearance.
It's time to take Jayde Adams seriously. But that doesn't mean you aren't permitted to laugh. In fact you probably won't be able to stop yourself from laughing.
Jayde Adams, The Ballad of Kylie Jenner's Old Face, Pleasance, until ugust 25. Tickets here.
Read more Edinburgh Fringe reviews here.
****
