COMEDY
****
Meryl O’Rourke – Bad Mother…
Underbelly Cowgate

A one-woman show exploring how much of our personalities are shaped by the experiences of our parents.  O’Rourke has a very sad and poignant story; her Jewish grand-father was killed in a concentration camp, and her mother – a half-german child at the time – witnessed him being taken away. This lead to her being a panicked, anxious, needy woman throughout O’Rourke’s life, affecting her social development and ability to be self-sufficient.

It sounds like this could be a depressing show, however the genre is very aptly comedy as O’Rourke’s way of presenting this in a palatable manner to the audience is to lather the topic in humour. ‘As a relocation specialist, Hitler beats the couple of cunts on Ch4 – because of the Nazis, I live handy for Oxford Street’.   O’Rourke gives us an insight into the individual lives of those blighted by the holocaust, as well as the reverberating effects on the lives of generations much further down.  O’Rourke is sure some of her mother’s parenting techniques were incredibly unhealthy and damaging – but processes this with her natural humour; ‘clearly my mother was actually a parenting maverick … they thought she was crazy in the ’80′s when she thought paedophiles were everywhere, but actually …!’   O’Rourke’s comedy career is a product of her mother’s insane obsession with showbizz, which included her mother taking her on stalking escapades at a time when celebrities listed their addresses in the phone book.

O’Rourke uses the visual queue of a washing line of family photos, and quips about how this will affect her own ability to parent her daughter.  Already she feels she’s failed, like the time she turned up at the nursery in a PVC catsuit. She feels the biggest talents she have are things it would be inappropriate to pass down, like ‘how to give a great blowjob – that’s just something i can’t share!’

Meryl O’Rourke has a natural wit that few possess. Her material barely seems scripted, and she throws in shockers like she’s never known the existence of a moral compass. She is aware of her potential to offend though, and apologises at several key points throughout the show which detracts a bit.  In order to successfully deliver cutting edge black humour, it has to be done with conviction and without apology. This show could easily be a 5-star.