Anna Burnside reviews ‘a jolly hour’ with some observations that ‘ring cringingly true’.
Is it, Tiff Stevenson wonders, hot girl summer or just perimenopause?
It’s a fair enough joke, although it would work better if it was actually sunny and not a grey Scottish summer day at a show inside a drainy-smelling cave on Niddry Street.
Much of this jolly hour sees Stevenson musing about the transition between being a hot girl and one hovering on the perimeter of menopause. Her material on manifesting is particularly strong.
Manifesting, for the older generation, is the thing youngsters do to make good things happen. Let us manifest free entrance to the club, she hears one lovely girl say to another.
Stevenson puts them right on this. Manifesting shmanifesting. They are young and hot and if they ask sweetly for things, they regularly appear. It is, actually, genetics.
She has a good descriptive eye. Her thoughts on observing middle-aged sex - a wrecking ball hitting trifle - ring cringingly true.
Her father’s dementia is a genuinely moving segment, although she is shakier on the intersection of feminism and the class struggle.
Stevenson also has a demanding guardian angel she found on TikTok. Who knew such a thing existed? Comedy can be educational as well as funny.
Tiff Stevenson: Post Coital is at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Hive 1) at 14:50 until August 24, 2025.
Photo by Steve Ullathorne.
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