Geraldine Hickey is a popular comedian in Australia, where she won the best show award at the 2021 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Not yet a household name but a talented comic who has put in the work over many years and whose star is on the rise, regularly appearing on radio and television and selling out shows across the country.
So it’s a treat for Edinburgh audiences to get up close and personal in an intimate show at a venue that is exactly as its name suggests – a box.
Hickey’s stage presence is warm and calming, with an almost whispered delivery that feels like sitting down for a natter and a cup of tea with an old friend. A friend who is obsessed with birds (she’ll even sell you postcards after the show of photographs she’s taken of her favourite feathered friends) including the rare orange-bellied parrot – and has a wife whose passion is driving carriages pulled by the couple’s two horses and a pony.
The wedding to her long-term partner forms the backbone of the show, and while the retelling brings many laughs, it also comes with a degree of poignancy. Marriage equality was only legalised in Australia in 2017 after a long battle by the LGBTIQ community and allies, and a bruising public vote, so the triumph of the occasion is tempered by the difficult road to get there.
Hickey is a gifted storyteller, and she takes us on a hilarious and touching journey from planning the wedding to the details of the big day. As someone not comfortable with traditionally feminine clothes (she says she looks like, “ET in a dress”), her joy and enthusiasm for the reality TV show Say Yes to the Dress, is endearingly wholesome, and her spin on it for her own wedding, “Say You Beaut to the Suit” had me fully invested inher unconventional road to married life.
As someone who grew up in Edinburgh but now lives in Melbourne, I laughed along at many of the niche Australian references, but to those unfamiliar with terms like “boogie boards” and “brumbies”, some of the jokes may have failed to land.
But there was enough accessible content and a wonderfully charming finale to make it a thoroughly entertaining hour of fun from a comedian at the top of her game.
Geraldine Hickey is at Assembly, George Square (The Box) until 27 August
