The influences of many female English comics on the Fringe can be easily traced. Take a pinch of Victoria Wood, add a splash of Smack the Pony and the world is your derivative oyster.
Thank heavens for Joanna Neary, whose skewed clowning is gloriously different. Frizzy-haired and porcelaincheeked, her forte is superbly offkilter sketches. One moment she is a sublimely funny Björk, the next she is a neutered cat sporting a boater and stoic grin. An immaculate Brief Encounter parody encapsulates a lost age of repressed passion, snobbery and lumpy marmalade.
Two skits shunt her onto the mustsee list. The Billie Holiday-ish dissection of sexual metaphors in jazz is breathtakingly convincing, while her showstopper is the Pan's People-esque interpretation of the suicidal lyrics in Harry Nilsson' s Without You. Lee Evans broke through in 1993 doing a similar trick with Bohemian Rhapsody. This could make 2004 Neary's year.
By contrast, New Yorker Wendy Spero wears her influences on her thrift-store sleeve. This red-headed pixie, whose overprotective mother is a sex therapist, could have dropped straight out of a Woody Allen movie. But there is sadness behind the screwballism. Spero's father died when she was a baby and Who's Your Daddy? follows her attempts to resolve the emotional conundrum of missing someone she never knew.
This tightly scripted comedy comes as close to theatre as possible while remaining eligible for a Perrier. It may greatly irritate anyone who dislikes serial wackiness, but this critic found Spero's monologue seductive. And everyone ought to enjoy footage of her grandmother fainting in a synagogue, her grandfather's luxuriant moustache and her mother's deadpan delivery of Spero's material onstage in a Manhattan club. Exquisitely moving and beautifully offbeat.
Neary until at Underbelly until 29 August (0870 745 3083); Spero is at the Assembly Rooms until 30 August (0131 226 2428).
