Newcastle-based female comedy troupe Your Aunt Fanny were formed at Live Theatre and have spent years working the circuit with their wild, often surreal and frequently hilarious sketches. Now one of the members of the group is trying her hand at a solo act, enthusiastically presenting it at Live Theatre prior to heading up to Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Emma Crowley-Bennett describes her Fanny Bleach persona as a “Geordie drag thing” which is immediately a little confusing and slightly misleading. Crowley-Bennett is clearly a talented performer with very little in the way of inhibitions, but her act does not fall into the standard drag artist category. Even the name Fanny Bleach conjures images of a slightly butch, acid-tongued drag queen hurling insults and innuendos at the audience. This is not that.
Firstly, Fanny Bleach does not actually appear in The Nearly Naked Show as a character. Instead, in this one-woman show Crowley-Bennett seems to play Fanny Bleach playing an assortment of bizarre and grotesque characters that are paraded before the audience under the guise of a sort of freak show. This allows for relatively quick sketch style vignettes where each character is given their time in the spotlight, each being even more disconcerting than the last.
Our emcee is Daniel, a child-like young man on works experience who introduces each freak in turn. There is Bag Hag, a weird monstrosity made of carrier bags who lip-synchs a song before stripping off her multiple layers of carriers. We meet One Tit Wanda, who lives up to her name most impressively, as she is investigated by the police for the mysterious death/disappearances of her last 16 husbands, and then there is Hairy Mary, an artist’s model with an extreme and extremely unusual talent. Saying more would rob the show of its shock and surprise factors, although a real highlight is the character Marie Rose, a “prawn star” who delivers a supposedly erotic video appearance while preparing herself (in a culinary sense) in the bath.
This show will not be for everyone, but then neither was Monty Python in the 1960s, or The Mighty Boosh (which this can probably be likened to closer than anything else) in the late ’90s. It is a little ramshackle and lacks a clear, easy hook to market to a wider audience. However, Crowley-Bennett should be admired for her wildly imaginative and unashamedly silly solo act, as well as for her sheer balls (which are somehow literally displayed during the show). The Nearly Naked Show offers some nuggets of truly unique and hilarious comedy and there is no doubt that this will go down a storm at Edinburgh Fringe where this show is guaranteed to make your monocle fall out and your hat to fly clear off your head.
Reviewed on 29th July 2026
Runs most of August at 9.50pm at Assembly Roxy Downstairs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
The Reviews Hub Score
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7
