Rose Matafeo @ Pleasance Courtyard
Rose Matafeo's Horndog is obscenely good
Misdirection works best when you don’t know it’s happening. Rose Matafeo’s Horndog starts before it begins as audience members innocuously play table tennis with a suitably outfitted host, but this gives few hints of what’s to come. Matafeo herself is an infectious personality, quick to self-promote and self-deprecate in equal measure, and happy to guide the audience through her various passions (and, erm, "horniness") for all things pop culture, including Franz Ferdinand, K-Pop and, when it's appropriate, Katherine Hepburn.
"These aren’t jokes, I’m just talking", she says, and if so then she’s a natural performer who’s obscenely good at this. The detours into stories about her awakening sexuality and brush with harassment are handled casually yet deftly, indicating a sharp comedy mind brimming with potential – such positivity and exuberance mixed with real smarts and stand-up chops are a rare treat indeed. Ultimately the show (and Matafeo herself) gets brasher and faster and louder and more manic until its premise inevitably becomes its own punchline in a finale which, really, you should have seen coming.
Rose Matafeo: Horndog, Pleasance Courtyard (Above), 1-26 Aug (not 14), 6:20pm, £6-11
Scroll on to read more of The Skinny's 2018 Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews; click here for a round-up of all the best reviews from this year's comedy and theatre programme