Harriet Dyer: Easily Distra … review – how to sell a single shoe on eBay and other stories

Harriet Dyer, a past recipient of the Sean Lock award for comic originality, truly embodies that promise of eccentricity in her latest performance, "Easily Distra...". True to its title, this show eschews coherence and narrative structure, instead offering 55 minutes of rapidly shifting memories as Dyer traverses the landscape of her itinerant existence. Moving from Cornwall to Birmingham and then to Bristol, the scattered host is constantly on the move, yet peculiar incidents seem to follow her everywhere. The real-life Harriet might understandably be perplexed by this – an old school friend remarked, in a rather backhanded compliment, that she hasn't changed since she was four – but it's undoubtedly a boon for her comedy.

Dyer's comedy hardly needs external assistance; with an increasingly recognizable presence on television, she's on the cusp of broader recognition. However, in this intimate Edinburgh venue, she presents as a wonderfully marginal figure. A tattooed screwball from the West Country, she rummages through her props for DIY comedy accessories, punctuating punchlines with a windmill-like physicality and vocal sound effects. While her previous Fringe shows, such as the acclaimed "Trigger Warning" in 2022, tackled more profound themes, Dyer herself describes this one as "a very silly hour indeed." Here, she fantasizes about growing feathers, comically sells a single shoe on eBay, and commemorates the moment a seagull snatched her beekeeping brother's bratwurst.

The material contains the seeds of several potential Fringe shows, including a segment about her closeted gay father and another detailing her teenage fondness for alcohol. While mental health, a subject Dyer openly explores in other contexts, isn't the primary focus here, many jokes, with their peculiar humor, only thinly veil something more disquieting – such as the anecdote about breaking her own arm to quit a dead-end job. Yikes. Nevertheless, "Easily Distra..." consistently leans into its quirky charm, with Dyer maintaining an upbeat tone through strong, consistent gags (like the one about the roundabout or the 'al dente' variety of traffic accidents) and captivating anecdotes. The result is nothing more, and nothing less, than an amusingly eccentric autobiographical stand-up hour.