31/07/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Forth), Edinburgh

(Happy to use she or they)

It’s that time again, when Edinburgh explodes with literally thousands of new shows – and for no particular reason that we can determine, first out of the stalls for us this year is Chloe Petts, who has named her show after er… her favourite things in the world (I’ll leave it to you to work out what they might be). She must be delighted with the turnout for her first performance, which sees the capacious Pleasance Forth very nearly packed to capacity. She strolls out and, seemingly without effort, gets the crowd on side.

Okay, it’s not revolutionary stuff, but her confident patter ranges from her formative years – when she found herself avidly embracing the lad culture of the early noughties (and often actually being mistaken for a lad in the process) – to her doomed attempts to hide her sexuality from her straight-laced but well-meaning parents.

As her story unfolds, Petts unleashes a whole barrage of howlingly funny one-liners and, at key moments, conducts a beautifully-timed series of high fives with a young lad in the front row, who doesn’t quite know whether to go with them or cross his arms in mortification.

All in all, it’s a promising start to Fringe 2025 and I leave having enjoyed a really good laugh throughout her sixty-minute set. In a world where such a commodity seems to be in increasingly short supply, what more can you reasonably ask from a stand-up?

4 Stars

Philip Caveney