★★★★☆
Amy Gledhill showers us in love and laughter — and gets a tit (yes, singular) out for The Queen.“I feel like I’m in the right place at the Fringe — it’s where the bullied come,” says Amy Gledhill at one point in her set. It’s one of the many endearing quips from the Hull comic, who’s one half of the sketch duo The Delightful Sausage. We feel warm, welcome and at ease, as she reels off a litany of her personal romantic woes. The Girl Before The Girl You Marry, as its title suggests, is all about Gledhill’s previous relationships, which mark her out as “a human property developer”, surveying and improving men before they eventually scarper. It doesn’t take long, she confides in us, until they’re married to another woman. As such, there’s plenty of comic fodder and plenty of gossip-mongering, or “juice”, as Amy likes to call it. She promises to give us the juiciest of anecdotal mishaps at the end and provides front-row audience members with confetti poppers for the big reveal, to make us feel involved throughout.
We explore Amy’s past too, with a history of relationship failures all piling onto one another. Granted, there are some moments of real down-to-earth romance: a roast chicken dinner in the bath (yes, with gravy), and being high as a kite with her current partner in Pizza Express after a few cannabis-infused chocolates.
Yet, as ever, it’s those real cringeworthy moments that get the biggest laughs. And nothing could be more cringeworthy than inadvertently flashing the monarch in a dance. Such treason would scar you for life.
Given the show centres around Amy’s tribulations, it could quite easily fall into her being the brunt of the joke. But she hits on just the right note of self-deprecation that we all get to have a laugh. Plus, there’s justice there too – at the girl who told her to shush during an asthma attack and the fact Amy’s in a happy relationship now.
You’ll have to find out for yourself what the juiciest story of Amy’s is. Everything leading up to it is impressive too. It turns out Amy Gledhill is quite the catch.
Amy Gledhill’s ‘The Girl Before The Girl You Marry’ is on at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Carnivore 2) at 15:30 everyday aside from Wednesday 17 August.
