Just what we need – a pen of one’s own ★★★★★

---

Written by Veronica Lee in The Independent on August 10th, 2013

Sometimes a comic has a moment, and Bridget Christie is having hers. I used to find her surreal comedy – when she dressed as a donkey, or an ant or some such – just a little too fey, lightweight even, but in A Bic For Her (The Stand until 25 August ★★★★★) she dares to take on the heavyweight subject of feminism.

It’s a subject she’s passionate about, but she’s never preachy. Rather, she uses absurd arguments – taken to the point of stuttering rage – to ridicule everyday sexism, linking Sir Stirling Moss’s fall down a lift shaft to his opinions about female racing drivers, or suggesting a suitable tennis-ball-based punishment for John Inverdale after his comments about the Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli.

She also uses the sneakily clever device of putting words into hecklers’ mouths to comment on the worst aspects of misogyny, and never has audience participation worked to such great effect. Her direct action on lads’ mags in supermarkets, meanwhile, is inspired.

Christie is a wonderful physical comic, too, acting out to hilarious effect a scene in which the Brontë sisters realise that they can’t write their masterpieces because the A Bic For Her, “in a range of pastel shades with an easy-to-hold grip” for delicate little fingers, has not yet been invented. There are some misguided fools who think that feminism can’t be fun – Christie disproves that, and how.

Written by Veronica Lee in The Independent on 10th August 2013.
Filed Under: An Ungrateful Woman, Review

---