Well-travelled tomboy Stella Graham returns to the free fringe with an hours worth of stand-up about her fear mongering mother and jet setter lifestyle. Though labelled as comedy, A Pint Of Stella lacks any definition of the word as all Graham achieved was a set of bad dad jokes with predictable punchlines. Graham seemed to prefer a male audience as she commented there were way too many girls to understand her references to old-school video games. Towards the end of the show Graham gave a precise account of her colonic irrigation. This story was definitely an overshare and left some of the audience squirming in their seats.
The audience’s low-energy and muffled laughter made Graham start to doubt the quality of her own performance. Graham stopped her set half way through in an effort to conjure up some sort of atmosphere is the room. However her Mexican wave was met with a half-hearted response, as only a few people bothered to stand up from their seats to participate.
A Pint Of Stella isn’t so bad that it is entirely unfunny. A photograph of a young Graham with a bad haircut had the audience chuckling. However, most of her stories were greeted with forced smiles rather than rapturous laughter. Graham did make one good analogy when she commented that the audience’s somewhat patchy and stifled laughter was similar to a bad Skype connection.
With a multitude of brilliant comedy shows in Edinburgh this month, A Pint Of Stella will leave you wishing you’d grabbed a pint elsewhere.
