Tamsyn Kelly review: Invigorating show is a hilarious shock to the system
Image: Rebecca Need-Menear
Tamsyn Kelly has a glass of prosecco on stage with her and honestly, it’s what the woman deserves. She should be celebrating, because her show Crying in TK Maxx is a triumph.
Barrelling in, she immediately feels like that friend who turns up to the pub with the best gossip, and holds the audience in the palm of her hand for the entirety of the next hour.
At one point about halfway through, I realised I hadn’t made any notes for ages because I was laughing too hard — and not so much laughing, more erupting in a series of involuntary and very unattractive cackles. Her style of storytelling is just like those pub conversations that dart off in different directions and keep circling back; and it works because just about everything Tamsyn says is surprising and unpredictable.
Having grown up on a council estate in Cornwall, which she describes as less pasties and Poldark and more “I was fingered in that mine”, she moved to London for the love of Grime. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard the word “pussyole” explained to a group of upper middle-aged Edinburgh Fringe audience members.
From her first crush on Mr Blobby and his “neanderthal spirit” to her affinity to dating painfully thin guys (because she likes to feel like Florence Nightingale), we learn about Tamsyn’s relationship with the men who have come and gone throughout her life, including her dad who she hasn’t spoken to in 15 years. That is until she comes across him in a Channel4 documentary and begins to reassess. He’s a bad guy, but what if people can change?
She doesn’t take her foot off the gas for a second, and it’s a bit of a shock to the system — in a good way, of course, because her energy is infectious, and it’s invigorating for everyone watching her. This is the kind of show where it feels like she’s saying everything for the first time. But not because it feels unpracticed, quite the opposite; she has nailed the thing that makes the best comedians great, of making you feel like you're the only room that matters.
See Tamsyn now because soon you’ll be struggling to get tickets.
Tamsyn Kelly: Crying in TK Maxx is at the Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker One) at 8:40pm until August 27th. Tickets here.
