Reviewed by: The List
Review by Jo Laidlaw | 19 February 2024
Kate Dolan is a silly little goose. She has a weakness for inspirational quotes, spends too much money on notebooks and is a little too obsessed with Hilary Duff. She’s also working class and English, so when her boss tries to ban tea at work chaos is bound to follow. Dolan’s first solo show is a twisty-turny hour through her trials and tribulations, an excoriating analysis of class in the arts, and a love letter to the power of maternal love. Along the way, there’s plenty of audience work, some great characterisation, an excellent Edinburgh accent and an awful lot of laughs. Her humour and references are uncompromisingly British, but she’s so good natured (and the room’s so small) that you can ask her to explain anything too UK-specific: she’ll no doubt happily oblige. On that room: there’s no doubt that it takes a heap of guts to stand up in the Rhino Room’s tiny Alley Cat (basically their big cupboard) and tell jokes to strangers in exchange for laughs. Glamorous it is not. But when Kate Dolan tells you she’s finally living her best life, you believe her. Grab this chance to get (very) up close and personal with a phenomenal emerging comic who is stepping into her power. Fast, confident and joyful, she is exactly where she’s meant to be and you should be too, if only to be able to say you were there at the very start. Kate Dolan: A Different Kind Of Unhinged, Rhino Room, until 24 February, 5.45pm.