The City Cafe (Nineties room)
Aug 6-30
(14:25)
This year’s Fringe has once again been a masterpiece of organisation. On a particularly hot day I gamboll’d down Blair Street looking for some Free Fringe fun, stopping halfway down at Laughing Horse @ City Café when I noticed a show called Serena Smart: Little Miss Sunshine. Intrigued, I settled in to wait.
The diner has an Elvis model greeting you at the door, while its poky downstairs rooms offer sanctuary from the Edinburgh bustle—and, on this occasion, a home for some fiery comedy that occasionally left you squirming in your seat.
Serena possesses an innate ability to pull you in, get you smiling & then get you laughing during an intense encounter of stand-up. The basement was absolutely full as she walk’d in, mic in hand & personality at the ready.
She’s been writing, travelling & performing for nigh on four years, making her Fringe debut in 2023, & Little Miss Sunshine proves to be exactly what its title suggests: an attempt to remain positive in a world that doesn’t always make positivity particularly easy.
Her comedy is sharp, while her ability to engage begins immediately as she enquires after the names & occupations of her audience. It’s a clever way of setting us at ease before coupling those interactions with punchlines—some rapid, some deliberately slow—that keep us laughing while never quite knowing who might become involved next.
Cat-calling creates a bouncy energy as she cracks us up & puts us down whenever she chooses. “I’m too blonde,” she declares, telling her story with enjoyable detail, observation & a breaking wit. There’s an edgy element to the crowd-work: you find yourself trying not to engage too obviously in case you become the next victim & suddenly every eye in the room is upon you.
The intimate City Café basement suits this perfectly. It’s a hot 45 minutes of extremely close social contact, sharing the room with a blonde woman who works both our smiles & her own, throwing herself willingly into those vivaciously cunning, potentially awkward moments from which successful crowd-work earns its laughter.
Yet Little Miss Sunshine is also a tightly constructed show. Its title gradually unravels into something genuine: Serena’s desire to encourage the people she meets towards at least a smile, perhaps even a little moment of happiness whenever one happens to come their way.
She’s done everything for the show herself, drawing extensively upon her travels & her experiences of making her way through a world that can sometimes be downright dangerous. The material travels almost as widely as Serena has—from coffee-shop experiences to the fall of the Soviet Union, alongside a frightening encounter with five men from whom she barely escaped.
Nothing seems entirely safe from ridicule, regardless of the seriousness of the situation. London being dogmatically depressed, therapy & her father’s obsession with Stalingrad all find their way into the comedy cauldron.
In this short 45-minute stint, Serena Smart manages to travel the world while allowing us the pleasure of her fruitfully funny company. Her strongest skill lies in really talking us in, talking us over & drawing us into the hands of a sparkling talent for fast gip, saucy behaviour & feel-good comedy.
And perhaps that’s what Little Miss Sunshine is really about: finding something to smile about even when the world gives you plenty of reasons not to.
Daniel Donnelly
