EDINBURGH 2023: Review: ANIA MAGLIANO: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'VE DONE THIS, Pleasance Courtyard

In my review of Ania Magliano's Fringe show last year I declared her a "rising star". With  her latest Fringe appearance I Can't Believe You've Done This, it seems fair to take out the "rising" and crown her simply as a star; her entire Fringe run selling out before the festival was even underway.

This year's hour finds Ania discussing the worst haircut of her life and how she learned to navigate life after such a horrifying ordeal. However, as the show interweaves sessions with her therapist, boxing lessons and a turbulent love life, it becomes clear that Ania isn't only talking about a bad haircut...

In using the disguise of a bad haircut to discuss trauma and the way it affects our lives, Ania crafts a wonderfully structured hour which proves Magliano is a master of the bait and switch technique; trailing off onto another subject, allowing the audience to happily glide away from the key themes of the show before she slams them back into the reality of the situatuon all the while nailing her punchline.

Within the use of this technique and in structuring her show this way, Magliano duplicates the experience of living with trauma; sometimes the memory of a traumatic event is ever present and sometimes you can live your life normally, forgetting all about it until you are struck by it out of nowhere. It is a genuis use of both structure and comedy throughout the hour, one that not only display's Magliano's clear intelect as a writer but also her wonderful delivery as a comic.

Whereas last year's show covered topics such as Jacqueline Wilson novels, horse girls and working in Lush, this year's routine shows great growth and maturity on the part of Magliano. Though her stage presence is still as cool, calm and collected as ever and the material is just as electric as it has ever been, the depth of her material now packs a much harder punch.

I Can't Believe You've Done This is yet another near-perfect hour of stand up from one of the greatest stand-ups in the UK. Though this review may grant this show four stars, same as last year's show, Magliano is constantly threatening to gain top marks and frankly, it seems only a matter of time until she earns it. 

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