Currently playing at Bunker Three at Pleasance Courtyard as part of Edinburgh Fringe, comedian Chelsea Birkby’s solo show is a philosophical exploration of control and self-help with a smile. With a microphone and a smart suit, Birkby looks every inch the conference speaker, which makes her show all the more amusing.
Power and PowerPoint come together in this sharp show, Is In Control The Entire Time – if you have been in the business or commercial worlds, a discussion of goals and SMART objectives might make you shudder. But in Birkby’s world, she wants the control to win the audience around to a standing ovation.
Is there a connection between sharing a magic trick and constructing a joke? And what about ‘dark psychology’, which allows one person to manipulate another? Sharing her thoughts with true Machiavellian charm, Birkby explores how the corridors of power impact on the human desire to control self, others, and what happens around us.
She’s a performer who speaks quickly with an occasional half-laugh, and her repartee with the audience feeds nicely into the introduction of her uber-confident, aggressive alter-ego ChiChi. Explaining why comedy is more intellectual challenge than laughter (“if I wanted to make you laugh I’d just tickle you”) Birkby takes the reins and pulls in the audience.
Exploring technology (YouTube searches can be quite disturbing) as well as what really happens when we deconstruct issues like gender, Is in Control The Entire Time casts a wide net across 21st-century life. It will make you think while keeping clear of the obvious belly laughs. Enjoyable and bursting with observations and ideas, but occasionally a little uneven.
3.5 stars.
Chelsea Birkby: Is In Control The Entire Time is part of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
I reviewed from a recording supplied by Chelsea’s PR.