Jo Caulfield, by now a mainstay of British stand-up, returns to Edinburgh with her new show, Jo Caulfield Goes to Hell.
Never afraid of improvisation and audience interaction, Caulfield mixes up good-natured, if merciless, dressings down of hapless audience members with well observed swings at ‘All the things that piss me off. Mostly people’.
In fact she has a list. She also has realistic greeting cards (“So sorry you’re leaving the company. Who are you?”), a letter to British Airways regarding lost luggage (“Yours utterly expecting f**k all, Jo Caulfied”), and audience submissions on who they want to tell to go to hell (George Bush, George Bush, Tony Blair, France.)
It’s this tendency to tread stand-up comedy’s familiar ground of airlines, low alcohol beer and the opposite sex which puts the show in danger of becoming clichéd. But somehow Caulfield manages to get away with it, her quick natural wit and ease with the audience pulling it all back from what could be just-another-comedian, to something entertaining and genuinely funny.
4/5
Daniel Connell
