Kate Dolan on confronting taboo topics through comedy: ‘I would struggle to do a show that was just silly’
Kate Dolan insists her latest show isn’t as sad as it sounds, even if Trout does touch on suicide, body issues and sobriety. Jay Richardson catches up with the absurdist comedian as she reflects on injecting silliness into taboo subjects and the role of loneliness in her live performance
Kate Dolan rolls her eyes at Fringe performers who liken a month in Edinburgh to surviving a war. While acknowledging stand-up can be tough, she tuts, ‘honestly though, I’ve had and done so much shit in my life, let’s have a bit of perspective.’ A case in point: when a baby started crying in the audience during her 2017 show, Idi-chums, a triple-hander with Joseph Emslie and Joseph Parsons, the erstwhile au pair dived on the grenade. She asked the mother that if she didn’t mind the swearing, would she allow Dolan to continue with the infant strapped to her chest. She soon got the child to sleep: a bittersweet early review. ‘Nothing like that really bothers me,’ the Midlands-raised, Sydney-based comic shrugs. ‘Being there in the moment: isn’t that what makes this so electric?’
Dolan began stand-up in London a decade ago while studying. But, as recounted in her 2024 solo Fringe debut, A Different Kind Of Unhinged, she then took four years off to care for her terminally ill, disabled mother. Going to Australia in 2020, getting married and settled there, she reinvented herself, ‘tried weird stuff and failed’. In the six years since, she’s collected a clutch of awards and considerable acclaim for her powerhouse absurdist style. Her director, comedian Emma Holland, describes her act as if ‘Miss Trunchbull had a soft spot for karaoke and Wind In The Willows’.
Trout is her third ‘hyper-personal’ show, a typically expressive, multimedia assault of mouth and movement, directly inspired by Frederick Ashton’s ballet version of Tales Of Beatrix Potter and other choreographers such as Crystal Pite. Emerging in a giant silicon fish head, Dolan dextrously cycles through vocal inflections and channels her youthful dancing dreams, with the premise that she would ‘rather be a fish than a woman, from the first time I was made to feel less. Over time you’re like a fish bone; every part of you picked apart until there’s no flesh left. It’s a metaphor for not wanting to be here anymore.’
Encompassing such suicidal thoughts, body issues, a tumultuous childhood and sobriety, ‘it sounds sadder than it is because it’s comedy’, she smiles wanly. As with her hero, the open yet artful US stand-up Maria Bamford, Dolan aims to ‘normalise fucked up things’, with her show ‘a moment to fully step into who I am and not feel shame’. Her previous hour, The Critic, about her persecuting inner voice, deeply resonated with audiences. ‘I often get messages on social media where someone tells me they’ve not stopped thinking about a specific joke; because even though it’s a joke, it’s the truth underneath they’re connecting with. I would struggle to do a show that was just silly. Maybe the reason I like doing this so much, doing it live and seeing people, is because I’ve felt alone for so much of my life.’
Despite being instinctively daft and contrarian (‘I push against restraint; I keep pushing myself’), Dolan requires genuine grit in the oyster. ‘I’ve been able to touch on topics that are quite taboo, make it silly with huge juxtaposition between dark and light. They aren’t hammered over your head, and sometimes people don’t even necessarily catch them. But if they touch you or you recognise them, hopefully you connect with them. And if you find it joyful for me to talk about them with reckless abandon, I’ve lots that I want to get off my chest.’
Kate Dolan: Trout, Monkey Barrel, until 30 August, 8.35pm.