In her debut cabaret show Unapologetic, Tarsha Cameron tells us it’s taken her years to get to the healthy place she is now, living in the land of not giving a stuff, and then takes us to those moments when she did, and she hurt. What reads in the Fringe Guide as ‘hilarious as it is heartbreaking’ and hints at perimenopause as a focal point for Cameron’s transcendent moment, might have mis-set the tone. There certainly are mentions of blood and an untameable body, but they’re more bookends to her life story than anything particularly exploratory. And there are definitely flashes of joy and celebration, but the bulk of the show is grounded in minor and major sufferings linked to growing up female, and also to living in a household of generational trauma. Reckoning with her Holocaust-surviving mother (who was four when she witnessed the horrors of a concentration camp), Cameron doesn’t dwell on what, exactly, went on in her house. Rather she tells us through song – in this instance, Suzanne Vega’s ‘Luka’, a softly-sung 80s classic about a physically abused boy who says, ‘they only hit until you cry, after that you don’t ask why.’ She doesn’t always smash out the notes, but when she’s singing such sensitive songs as ‘Luka’ and Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ to insert added meaning to her narrative, the emotion overtakes whatever imperfections might be heard. It’s where she shines. At times the show feels overly-scripted – if Cameron doesn’t get a line out properly, she’s likely to move backwards to get it right, rather than moving forwards through improvision and flow – but this is where we’re reminded that Fringe is the grassroots of artistic expression. Here’s a middle-aged woman who’s never done cabaret: it’s amateurish, unpolished – it’s unapologetic, and in a way, that’s what makes Cameron so recognisable.