Angela Barnes: You Can't Take It With You

It doesn't seem that long ago that I saw Angela Barnes win the BBC New Comedy Award at the Tabernacle in West London, a venue that was one of the cradles of alternative comedy. Two years later and the fast-learning, late-blooming, former Social Services exec has brought a very finely honed first hour to the Fringe.

Among the whimsical and showy female comedians who currently prevail, 37-year-old Barnes is an anachronism: a good old-fashioned observational jokesmith with a rather quaint structure. Inspired by the eponymous phrase used by her father, the show starts by exploring her relationship with him, and a picture of his liberal parenting emerges. His death is initially almost a footnote—until the moving closing sequence brings it all back home—because it's not dwelt upon and is instead the gateway to the show's conceit. Playing on the title, the subsequent material is seen through the lens of the items that Barnes would have buried with her.

Sex and dating mores, shopping habits and new hobbies are commentated on with consistent and lean gags which find the balance between blunt and self-deprecating, and apocryphal and real. Barnes' audience perhaps don't always respond as well as I would expect. Perhaps those from Generation X may be at an advantage here, particularly when it comes to a sequence like the skilful conjuring of a boring 1980s pre-pubescent afternoon, and the sharp contrast to modern life. That said, few could possibly leave this tight show feeling that they haven't taken something away with them.