Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Relay | Priya Hall: Reckless Abandon
Two shows explore each side of a queer couple looking to get married and become parents and while their approaches could not be more different the results are funny and moving
COMEDY
Relay ★★★☆☆
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August
Priya Hall: Reckless Abandon ★★★☆☆
Monkey Barrel (Cabaret Voltaire) (Venue 338) until 10 August
One would normally avoid sharing spoilers, but, given that one of these shows is about a woman marrying her girlfriend and becoming a parent, it’s impossible not to reveal that its companion piece, which details the couple’s efforts to conceive, ends in pure joy.
Leila Navabi’s Relay and Priya Hall: Reckless Abandon could not be more different in their approaches. Navabi uses witty songs, animations, storytelling and larger-than-life cut-out figures as props to represent the characters involved in her moving hour.
She details the logistical, emotional and financial journey towards parenthood after falling in love with her best friend. We become privy to the thinking behind who would donate the sperm, who would gestate the baby, how they were treated by medical experts, and the hopes that were dashed along the way.
The title, Relay, refers to what would become a monthly system of attempting to deliver sperm to egg – something that developed its own sweet traditions. It’s a lovely piece of theatrical storytelling – drenched in devotion – that delivers hope for non-traditional families and puts its arms around community.
Sometimes a performer is so breezily intent on spreading warmth that you don’t realise until a few hours later just how much they’ve been through. Hall’s Reckless Abandon is in no way a trauma show – in fact, it’s quite the opposite – but it’s sprinkled with references to aspects of her background that might cause a lesser character to crumble.
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She grew up in the Welsh valleys, with a less-than-ideal family model; her dad’s a “character” who left the country when she was three, and she’s had a few stepfathers. Although there’s some fascinating insight about having gone to a Welsh medium school – where she learnt everything in that nation’s native language and where noble principles occasionally clashed with dark political throwbacks – the meat of her hour is about relationships.
Without an ounce of self-pity, she touches upon the way her brown relatives eschewed her “unnatural” wedding, adding that, without official matrimony, the non-gestational mother would have to adopt the baby to be legally recognised as its parent.
We also learn how, with a great deal of effort, the mother who hasn’t given birth can induce lactation in order both to enhance her bond with the baby, but also to share the exhausting responsibilities of parenthood.
Hall takes a pared-back, comedic storytelling approach to her hour and, as with her sweetheart’s show, we’re left with a sense of optimism about how, with the right intentions, things can be better for future generations.
ASHLEY DAVIES
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