Alice Cockayne review: Individuality and brilliance from a fascinating performer

Alice Cockayne arrives on stage shrouded in baby blue satin, waving a box of biscuits and ululating like Kate Bush. She announces that her name is Susan and she can’t get enough of Jammy Dodgers. She’s the most annoying person in your office.

What follows in I Showered Before I Came enthusiastically succeeds in straddling the divide between fully dedicated clowning and, somehow, observational comedy about daily life.

Alice has other characters throughout the show — including a very sexy gorgeous gorgeous girl in a flashback who likes eskimo kisses, nip slips and coyly getting run over by a bus — but we always come back to Susan, her giant set of keys and excess of post-it notes.

If you work or have ever worked in an office, you definitely know Susan. You might avoid her, but you know her. The things she does on paper might not seem to be that out there: she keeps losing her glasses, reads Sally Rooney novels on the tube and has a dog called Spinach who spends the working hours at doggy daycare. But Alice creates a completely outrageous caricature of this mundane figure who is obsessed with every detail of the work day to a ludicrous degree, ultimately climaxing in a scene with Spinach the dog that is unexpected and brilliant.

There are moments of simple but glorious tech wizardry involving wigs and a torch that invoke a kind of super magnified water-cooler gossip. It’s a very wig-based show actually; when you’ve got ‘em, flaunt ‘em.

Alice is a wonderful vocal performer as well as a physical one, using her voice and body in extraordinary ways, wafting about the stage, revelling in every interaction with a constantly delighted audience.

This is exactly the kind of show you should be seeing at Edinburgh Fringe: it’s clowning, it’s character comedy XTRA strength, it’s something totally individual and fascinating. Mostly, a huge amount of fun.

Alice Cockayne: I Showered Before I Came is at Underbelly George Square (Wee Coo), 10:20pm, until August 28th. Tickets here.