Annie McGrath: The Seven Ages of An

It’s a tough gig coming up with a unique angle to make your first solo Fringe show fly. Get it wrong and this can be a long hour, and a long month, as Annie McGrath is possibly now discovering.

One half of the sketch duo Twins, McGrath has conjured a seemingly fertile concept here that allows her to flit between both character stuff and standup: seven personas of varying ages, from sperm to spirit, all also representing different aspects of a jobbing comedian’s psyche. There are props for each, stored in her comedy bookcase at the back of the stage, including a sheet for the aforementioned spectre. “I put this on the other day and some people left,” she admits. “So I cut eye holes in it.” Ah well, it now gives her one of the show’s bigger laughs.

The hour gets off to a promising start with a pithy intro, including a hilarious pasta-based artwork of her dad (the comedian Rory McGrath), but begins to drag as soon as the characters appear. They’re all actively portrayed by the comic in her regular deadpan manner, a gag that—appropriately enough—gets very old, very quickly.

Even McGrath sounds bored, trundling through a script that’s oddly devoid of punchlines; you wonder if she’s been culling misfiring jokes along the way. By the end—a baffling, badly-executed callback set piece about a famous actress — she’s almost apologetic, which doesn’t help.

It isn’t a total car crash, but this show could do with a serious service to survive August intact.