Elouise Eftos: Australia’s First Attractive Comedian review

Elouise Eftos: Australia’s First Attractive Comedian review – fabulously provocative jokes

Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghA wickedly amusing fringe debut considers the relationship between comedy, feminism and sexinessCan you be funny and good-looking? You’d think the question barely needs asking – but Elouise Eftos has done so, and received quite the reaction. She makes a stellar fringe d

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
A wickedly amusing fringe debut considers the relationship between comedy, feminism and sexiness

Can you be funny and good-looking? You’d think the question barely needs asking – but Elouise Eftos has done so, and received quite the reaction. She makes a stellar fringe debut with Australia’s First Attractive Comedian, a tongue-in-cheek title some have treated, by her account, as no laughing matter.

Should we be surprised the relationship between comedy, feminism and sexiness isn’t as resolved as we might have thought? In the space between them, the Perth comic makes great stacks of hay here, in a show premised on her extreme hotness. She chats to an audience member; we cut away to the erotic Elouise Eftos fantasy unfolding in that person’s head. She demonstrates the yawning gulf between herself and “normies”. She jokes about cat-calls, and the expulsion from the Beatles of handsome Pete Best. She makes common cause with her fellow bombshell, that innocent bank-teller turned patron saint of making wives jealous, Dolly Parton’s Jolene.