Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
With the air of a hungover postmortem, Richardson gives a head-spinning account of an encounter with an older comedian
If you’re partial to a bit of gossip and scandal, Harriet Richardson is your girl. In this gloriously juicy debut hour, she dishes the dirt on the DMs she received from an older comedian and the intense, utterly absorbing events that followed. Yes, she found his eBay account. And yes, she spent six months tracking him down on a dating app only to play his profile song hundreds of times. But what else is a girl driven by obsession supposed to do?
We meet Richardson, who until now has worked primarily as a performance artist, all smiles and ready to share. She takes us back to the creation of her 2024 viral piece 100 Dates, in which she spent Valentine’s Day online speed-dating in an attempt to analyse her relationship with infatuation and connection. The comedian in question used the project as the opening line of his first message to her. What followed is flirtation so blatant it makes your toes curl: “Do you want to see my trophy?”; a string of saucy snaps; and finally a frantic voice note from the comedian’s manager bringing the whole messaging saga to an abrupt end.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August
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