Sooz Kempner is perhaps best known to STARBURST readers for their work online, mostly through social media. They were also the titular Doom in the BBC’s multimedia Doctor Who Doom’s Day project, and they were one of the few extremely positive things about that ambitious and messy trans-media project.
Sooz Kempner is Ugly is broadly about the sort of dull, uninspiring, irritating and irksome abuse any talented woman receives online for simply trying to exist. This is a show about beauty, double standards and how the boring and mediocre will always try to drag anything interesting through the mud.
Like many of Sooz’s shows, this is also about nostalgia; the artist mines a very specific slice of British pop culture history for all its worth, specifically early 1990s BBC light entertainment. This spot of childhood recollection is mixed in with anecdotes about growing up, gags about dressage, observations on maleness and some great songs for good measure.
Sooz has a cracking set of lungs and a very strong sense of how to balance comedy with showing off. This pairs nicely with an explanation as to what makeup actually turns out to be; Kempner is also amazing with a brush.
Sooz Kempner Is Ugly is a show about truth and beauty, and what those things actually mean. There is an odd spot in which she roasts the world’s least interesting man (Elon Musk), and honestly, this is a bit of a low point; Musk is dull, and even the bright and brilliant Sooz Kempner can’t make him entertaining.
A great bit of fringe comedy, and well worth a trip to one of the Edinburgh fringe’s cosiest venues to check out.
You can book tickets for the Edinburgh Fringe show here and learn more about the artist here.
