Bec Hill: Bec By Popular Demand

Due to either missed deadlines, daredevil money-saving or invisible marketing, Bec Hill isn’t in the Fringe brochure nor the collective guide for Pleasance and its Big Four compatriots. This trend of minimising her public presence also seems to occupy her standup show. At times this cute, digestible routine about life’s successes and failures threatens to run away with the hearts of its audience, but instead stops short of reminding us why she’s back, by popular demand or otherwise.

Bizarrely, Hill’s occupational hazard is her versatility. She’s certainly too talented to centre her show on standup comedy. Her jokes are blusterously silly and safe but the set only comes to life when she touts her full artistry. She’s a superb producer, an adept sketch artist and craftswoman, but more crucially a gifted writer. At the moment, this show feels like shining a narrow spotlight onto a huge mosaic. Why not develop a show which exhibits and completely integrates her many other ventures? Not only will that put her writing to the test, it will allow us to fully engage with her as a cross-genre performer.

We’re rewarded with bits and pieces of these trades: hilarious television adverts about tampons she almost made and scenes from psychological crime thrillers she could have made. But we’re constantly diverted away from that, back to the regular routine about her peculiar personality. In this sense, Bec By Popular Demand is worthy because of the creative dexterity on display, just slightly let down by mismanagement and clumsiness.