A status as Fringe favourite and a viral stint for her infamous “Trump is a cunt” sign at the businessman’s visit to the Trump Turnberry golf resort mean that Janey Godley’s reputation definitely precedes her. If you offend easily, Godley’s certainly not the comedian for you: an apologetic force with a filthy mouth and a skewed perspective on the world, Godley doesn’t invite conversation with her audience. Her stand up is a force of nature, sweeping you along with it - whether you’d like to or not.
Godley’s style won't appeal to everyone – not that she’ll be fussed by that.
Godley has a great rhythm on stage and is comfortable mouthing off about any and every subject, even swinging the odd punch at her own family. She does this to good effect, although sometimes the structure doesn’t feel watertight. Godley moves between segments of her set fairly seamlessly, but the anecdotes themselves can feel a little overlong once the full extent of jokes has been reaped. There’s no strong overarching theme to Godley’s hour, which works very well for her but compared to several hundreds of stand ups who have crafted their material for a theme Godley’s show runs the risk of feeling mismatched.
The uncontested highlight of Godley’s material is her experience protesting against Trump, a fantastic story which has some genuinely shocking moments. Godley’s delivery is matter-of-fact and perfectly suits the ridiculous extents to which the story escalates, pitting Scottish and American attitudes against one another to create a high hit rate on gags. This high return of jokes is fantastic, although it does overshadow some of Godley’s previous material from the hour. There are some excellent one-liners in here, but Godley’s style won't appeal to everyone – not that she’ll be fussed by that.
