Rachel Parris review – the smiling assassin gets up close and personal

over 3 years in The guardian

Underbelly, George Square, EdinburghIn her show All Change Please it’s marriage, not politics, that’s at the heart of the Mash Report satirist’s finest jokesRachel Parris always knew this might be a show with an identity crisis. Having plied her trade for 10 years as a musical comic, crooning about her personal life, she then found fame as a satirist – her tart Mash Report sketches were watched by millions. All Change Please was created in early 2020 to bridge that divide – or as Parris has it: “The show was originally going to be about me going viral.” But Covid-19, and life, had other ideas. Now Parris arrives in Edinburgh with an hour that must account for her new marriage and parenthood too.That’s a lot to pack in, and I suspect Parris manages better to do so in the version of All Change Please that has recently been touring. Here, the shock – clearly considerable – of her newfound fame is raised and dispatched, a little unsatisfyingly, in one 20-second song. And the political material is given fairly short shrift. The wisecracks about Williamson, Hancock, Patel and co hit their Mash Report marks, mind you, and there’s a fine gag about how toadying Tory loyalty to Boris Johnson has alienated Parris from loyalty altogether.At Underbelly, George Square, Edinburgh, until 13 August.All our Edinburgh festival reviews. Continue reading...

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