Show name: Jess Fuchs: Feral
Performer(s): Jess Fuchs
Venue: Bunker Two at Pleasance Courtyard
Date and time: Tuesday 11th August, 6.55pm
Ticket prices: £15.50
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Reviewed by: Sarah Turnbull
Jess Fuchs doesn’t so much walk onto stage as arrive like a force of nature.
From the opening line — “I just want to set the record straight. I have two red marks on my knees, but that’s just from how I’ve been sitting!” — it’s immediately clear this is not going to be a quiet, sit-back-and-listen kind of hour. Fuchs is fast, bold and completely in command, bouncing effortlessly between jokes, crowd work and storytelling.
And she is quick. Very quick.
The tulle-wearing Australian takes you on a rollercoaster of outrageously funny stories. What appears on the surface to be a chaotic retelling of riotous tales is actually a cleverly mapped-out route. Fuchs is whip-smart, with an almost ridiculous ability to hold multiple comedic threads in her head at once. She’ll start telling a story, disappear down a tangent, begin a story within that story, somehow find herself three stories deep, and yet never lose the original thread.
You’re too busy laughing at the latest tangent to remember where she started, completely convinced that the original story has been abandoned. Then, in a stroke of comedic genius, Fuchs circles back and lands exactly where she intended to be all along. It’s one of the most impressive things about the performance: what initially feels spontaneous and chaotic is underpinned by an incredibly sharp sense of timing, structure and control.
She has an infectious ability to make the audience feel like they’re in on the joke. She encourages us to embrace the drama and gossip, and her stories about family, dating and being ghosted are delivered with an honesty that makes you feel like you’ve accidentally been added to the world’s most entertaining group chat.
Her line about being ghosted — “You’re ghosting me, but I’m haunting you” — perfectly captures her style: bold, self-aware and just the right side of unhinged.
There’s a real playfulness to Fuchs’ performance. She’s constantly interacting with the room, reacting to unexpected noises, encouraging the audience to harass her ex, breaking the fourth wall and occasionally admitting that she’s probably telling us too much. She seems entirely willing to follow a joke wherever it takes her, and somehow always knows exactly how to bring us back.
Her delivery is expressive and physical, with little asides and reactions that make even the smallest moments feel like part of the wider adventure.
She’s also wonderfully unafraid to say what everyone else is thinking. Whether she’s taking sides with the Titanic, admitting there’s a devil in her that likes to eat at midnight, or reacting to laughter from another venue with an immediate “hate that”, Fuchs finds comedy in the tiny observations that feel instantly relatable.
The result is a rollercoaster of an hour. There are big laughs, little asides, audience interactions and moments where you genuinely have no idea where she’s going next, but you’re more than happy to let her take the wheel.
By the end, her set feels less like watching a comedian perform and more like spending an hour with someone who has decided that the only sensible response to life’s disasters is to tell everyone about them, loudly, honestly and in increasingly hilarious detail.
Jess Fuchs is a force to be reckoned with: whip-smart, fearless and gloriously unfiltered. An hour in her company is one hell of a ride.
