| Marian Pashley | Venue: Gilded Balloon Teviot (Dining Room), Edinburgh Festival
Date: August 2004 |
Hull's Marian Pashley is the Angel of the North. She opens her show by "cheekily" (her own words, not mine) striking the pose of the well-known sculpture. Personally I felt that she looked a little more religious than sculpturous but as the show hadn't even started, I decided to give her a break. So why is she called the Angel of the North? Well, to be fair, I was questioning that myself as she didn’t appear to have either wings or a harp and she was certainly not, as I already mentioned, a 65ft, 100 tonne statue. But then she answers our question. I say our, it might not have been something that was on everyone’s mind, but as the audience was made up of only 12 people, I think it’s a safe bet that it had crossed each of our minds at some point in the first few minutes of Pashley’s show. Well apparently her father’s pet-name for her as a child was Angel, however as she confesses to having been a clumsy, bug-eyed child who sounded like a 70-year old Yorkshireman due to her strong Hull accent I felt that some people might find that a little hard to believe. Pashley identified some insightful truths of “living up North” and in that sense she’s much like a Yorkshire version of Forrest Gump. But her act was noticeably disorganised and occasionally she confused her material. Not surprising as she covered literally dozens of topics in just 60 minutes. What was surprising however was that the northern theme didn’t appear to pervade all of her material as I had expected it might have. I had believed that Pashley’s humour might have been fairly caustic and perhaps a little controversial but this wasn’t really evident from an hour with the Angel. Consequently I didn’t find her show to be a completely enjoyable experience. | 
