Anna Morris: It's Got to Be Perfect

★★★
comedy review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
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Published 16 Aug 2016
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Georgina is getting married and the date is set for 29 August at Edinburgh Castle – conveniently allowing 22 rehearsal run-throughs at the Fringe. It's the moment she's “dreamed about since the womb.” She's determined for it to be perfect – “bigger than Lady Diana's funeral”. She is, after all, the self-styled "bridal equivalent of Ghandi".

That's the set-up for character comedian Anna Morris' live follow-up to the viral success with her series of YouTube wedding blogs. It's a pretty thin hamming up of marital stereotypes, but plenty of fun. Her crowd work is audacious, patrolling the audience and confiscating anything that lowers the tone, from cans of Tennent's to Primark bags.

It's also a vehicle to send up the British class system. This is a spoiled brat, with a wedding budget of half a million. She's even setting up a charity called Bride Aid, to save poor working class women from off-the-peg wedding dresses and supermarket cava. There's room for gentle political satire too: the groom is a Conservative MP just appointed Minister for Women and Equality, but can't be here tonight because “planning a wedding is women's business”.

It's a tad two-dimensional to sustain an hour. By the time the rehearsal properly kicks off—with audience members filling in for the various roles—we've heard similar jokes too many times, and the inevitable bridal breakdown is a little predictable. There are plenty of laughs along the way though, and Morris gives an impressively dedicated character performance.