Bridget Christie - A Bic For Her

I found a quietish spot in the Soho Theatre bar and leaned by the blackboard, waiting for Bob and Twon to arrive. I played on Twitter for a bit then eventually read who was performing that night. Bridget Christie downstairs, John Kearns upstairs and in the main theatre, Tommy Tiernan. What a line up, and I really wanted to see all of them. However, tonight was a Bridget night.

As you probably know, I adore Bridget and have seen 2 previews of this show before the Fringe. She then took it to Edinburgh and won the Fosters prize (still known to most people as the Perrier Award), quite shockingly becoming only the 3rd woman to win it. Her previous shows that I have seen (War Donkey and the one about A Ant) were allegories of feminism, but in this show she tackles the subject head on.

She seemed in a particularly jaunty mood tonight, shaking the front row's hands as she came on and beginning the show by telling us of her previous shows that had always been rather sparsely attended, and told us of one show with only one woman in the audience of a show that required a lot of audience participation. A comedy show about feminism could be seen my some to be a bit boring, but even the biggest sexist couldn't accuse Bridget of that. Her Stirling Moss routine provides a combination of silliness and discomfort from some parts of the room, which ends up with her reading an email that Moss himself has sent her.

She responds to a non-existent heckle that Bob has apparently made about shy she doesn't tackle the bigger subjects such as FGM, and tells us of her one woman crusade to dispose of any lads mags she finds at a child's eye height, as well as handing out a "money prize" during the 30 second section of the show completely dedicated to the lads.

She goes on to talk about the eponymous "Bic For Her" and argues that the lack of a ladies pen may be why the Austen sisters were so bad at writing. The show ends as a tribute to Malala Yousafzai, and Bridget reads from the speech she gave at the UN, but just as the mood starts to get too serious, she punctures it with a great call back to the ladies pen.

Bridget has already sold out two runs of this and will be back doing more in March so if you haven't seen this show, then please do try to get a ticket, but get one fast because the March run will obviously sell out too. I spoke to Bridget in the bar and asked her that as she is doing so many performances of this show, does she ever get bored saying the same things. 

Immediately she replied "No, because I believe everything I say".