EDINBURGH 2026: Review: ANNA LEONG BROPHY: BORN SEXY YESTERDAY, Pleasance Courtyard, Below

Hatched from an egg, 'Jacket' is born, unwraps herself and immediately imprints on the first human she sees, a man sitting in the front row. Naively announcing that she belongs to him, she asks him to help her get dressed, setting the tone for Anna Leong Brophy’s worryingly surreal and sharply observed Born Sexy Yesterday.

The hapless, sarcastic man in the front row is asked to follow her instructions, helping Jacket dress, feeding her and answering her increasingly bewildered questions. Yet beneath the silliness, the struggle is heartbreakingly clear from this very first interaction: the patriarchy is everywhere.

Fast forward ten years and Jacket begins to realise the uncomfortable truth. She was a FemBot, designed and purchased for male gratification. Rejecting the lifestyle she was created for, she decides to restart her life, only to discover that the gizmo wristband controlled device offers a depressingly limited selection of female variations, each designed to fulfil a male fantasy.

There is the angry housewife, ditsy babe, the girl who grew up with brothers, damsel in distress, immigrant with a dream, farmer’s daughter, hooker with a heart of gold, native princess and femme fatale. Jacket wants something better.

Her search for a fully realised female identity becomes the wonderfully absurd central point of the show. Even the human manual offers only options for men, leaving Jacket with the familiar choice of Madonna or whore. She tries both, neither fits.

Brophy’s comedy is at its best when these ridiculous scenarios expose painfully recognisable truths. A female friend recruited from the audience attempts to have a conversation with Jacket about something other than men, only to fail, whereupon the Bechdel Test is explored. The audience is then challenged to think of films which pass it, with the resulting struggle to come up with examples, making the point crystal clear.

Jacket discovers that women in film are routinely murdered, exploded or rendered irrelevant, prompting her to delve further into the gizmo and summon her great grandmother for help. It is another gloriously odd turn in a show which embraces its sci-fi premise while continually bringing the conversation back to the real world.

There is a particularly strong sense of purpose beneath the comedy. Born Sexy Yesterday asks why female characters are so often created in relation to male desire, why women are expected to remain young and desirable, and why fully formed female characters remain comparatively scarce.

Brophy’s physicality and surreal comic sensibility keep the material buoyant, while Jacket’s increasingly desperate search for another option gives the show a genuine emotional core. The arrival of powerful feminist energy from women across history provides an uplifting final movement, reinforcing the idea that the future becomes brighter through community, softness, self discovery and greater opportunities for non male artists.

Born Sexy Yesterday is an important piece of comedic theatre, knowingly ridiculous, but its central question is crucial regarding how women work to command greater opportunities, with an encouragement to grow the creation of female led performance.

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