[2015132] Alice Fraser: Everyone’s A Winner
Alice Fraser @ Gluttony – Pigtails
6:20pm, Sun 8 Mar 2015
After a rocky early encounter, I’ve kinda fallen in love with Alice Fraser’s comedy: some of her après-Fringe sets have been glorious work, and she’s always a charmer to chat with around the traps. Everyone’s A Winner was thus inked in nice’n’early.
Fraser sat onstage as the small crowd entered, quietly engaging in gentle chit-chat until a check with her tech announced the start of the show proper. And suddenly, we’re thrust into previous life as a corporate lawyer: we hear about office politics, the need to “win” within corporate culture, career-limiting moves, her almost cartoonish mentor Dave, and the depression & stress & harassment & tears associated with the job.
This all sounds heavy-handed and oppressive, but that’s far from the case: Fraser delivers tales of woe lightly and with cunningly humorous barbs, with body language carrying much of her derision whilst words deliver the laughs. There’s little movement on the stage – maybe a partial strip to demonstrate dress standards, and the occasional reach for a prop – but that totally works within the context of Fraser’s delivery: this is anti-corporate humour being delivered with a corporate face, and the jokes come at a rapid rate. In fact, the only let-up in the show was when Fraser pulled out her banjo to announce that she was the Best Stalker in the Land (as first seen in 2013)… not that the song was a dud, it’s just that it didn’t really seem to fit in the framework of the show’s narrative.
The more I see of her, the more I enjoy Alice Fraser. Her comedy is thoughtful and intelligent, and her style is fantastic: she drops killer jokes with a restraint and softness that belies their eventual impact, and her use of pregnant pauses is absolutely compelling. I – for one – am so glad that she abandoned her former career, and I’ll continue inking her shows in whenever I can.
(132) Alice Fraser- Everyone's A Winner: Brilliantly weighted set on the perils of must-win culture. Perfect use of space #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) March 8, 2015