Abigoliah Schamaun: It's Pronounced Abigoliah Schamaun

Despite having spent years honing her craft on some of New York City's most bohemian stages, Abigoliah Schamaun remains firmly in the clutches of an upbringing in small-town Ohio. She would doubtless agree with this statement, and while her show suggests that repressive life in Midwestern America has sown the seeds of her hedonistic lifestyle and confessional approach to standup, she seems less aware of the extent to which it has conditioned her expectations of audiences.

Former neighbours may well have been shocked by her burgeoning promiscuity and increasingly outlandish appearance, but tales of threesomes and contracting chlamydia retain little impact when wheeled out at the world's largest arts festival. No longer a favourite subject of gossiping curtain-twitchers, the comedian's exploits simply aren't as interesting as she continues to think. It's by being a natural comic with an effortlessly engaging manner that she triumphs, despite telling one tired anecdote too many.

Abigoliah knows how to sell even the ropiest or most spur-of-the-moment material, and her honesty can be disarming when she touches on more incidental aspects of her life. Though her latest hour is a structurally flawed attempt to present the kind of coherent, thematically consistent show that Fringe audiences now demand, it's exciting to watch genuine talent in the raw. This fiesty 28 year-old gives the impression of having arrived with a fully formed comedic voice already in place. If her material was up to the same standard as her performance, she would be unstoppable.

http://www.abigoliah.com/