Farm Fatale feels like it was written after the deadline for submitting a title to the Fringe programme, which is to say there are disappointingly few jokes about tractors. Hopefully that means Katie Norris will return to mine the rich seam that is agriculture-based humour, because it’s truly the only thing lacking in this cracking solo debut hour. Pacy, tight and featuring her own original songs, there’s a true writer’s brain at work here: her callbacks, in particular, are so deft, daft and delightful that there should probably be a case study written about them.   

Norris’ world teems with bad dates, her Gen-Z flatmate, well-meaning friends telling her ‘you’ll get there’ (‘there’ being ‘married’), her beloved cat and equally beloved cat-sitter, each brought to life with an actor’s attention to characterisation (her dad went to RADA; it’s in the blood). Her songs add to the air of complete ridiculousness, but her world-building is such that refrains like ‘bitch, please don’t feed my cat’ and ‘I want to be your mummy’ feel like entirely normal responses to the situations she creates.

There’s an edge here too, a sense that she likes to keep her audience just slightly unbalanced. As her final bit builds to a Hitchcockian level of histrionic melodrama (that in other hands would be simply unbearable), the realisation dawns: Norris really cannot put a foot wrong. This is a deceptively complex, laugh-out-loud show that claims Katie Norris’ spot both as a true agricultural icon and one to watch. 

Katie Norris: Farm Fatale, Pleasance Courtyard, until 25 August, 8.30pm; main picture: Lucy Ridges.