When it comes to audiences behaving badly, Fringe comedians fall into two specific categories, the ones that thrive on it, gamely abandoning their material in order to string together a frantic new routine and the tones who simply implode. Bethany Black, all 6ft, recovering alcoholic, lesbian, drug dabbler and by her own admission a paranoid overthinker falls very much into the second category, as just as she is about to begin her set in walk three, drunk, loud, men who begin to heckle her. Black does her best to calm them down and once they have settled she tries to start her show but sadly for Black the damage has already been done.
For tonight Bethany Black is so rattled that she fails spectacularly to get the audience on her side through a clunky, uncomfortable opening set up. Things then go from bad to worse as she starts stories and then quickly abandons them mid-sentence as the audience aren’t able to invest in her and can’t get into her neurotic observations. After a wobbly start she does begin to regain her confidence but then one of the hecklers walks out and rather than rejoice Black is close to tears. A shame as tonight by her own admission is her worst night of the Fringe, but really the problem lies not in these heckles but in Black’s material, delving into such brutally honest subject matters as her addictive personality, dating a prostitute, alcoholic mothers and frankly dozens of self depreciating tales that while brave subjects are frequently as unintentionally disturbing as they are unfunny.
2/5 
Martin Miller
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