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Angela Bra: Life Lessons

COMEDY


Angela Bra: Life Lessons

32 Below

32b West Nicolson Street
Little Cellar: AUG 4-14 at 11:30 (60 min) - Free & Unticketed

Angela Bra: Life Lessons

Bar 50

Within A&O Edinburgh City Hostel, 50 Blackfriars Street
Upstairs: AUG 15, 18-19, 22, 25-28 at 11:30 (60 min) - Free & Unticketed

Angela Bra: Life Lessons

Singer/Songwriter, rising star on social media and part-time primary school music teacher, Miss Angela Bra, invites you to share in her words of wisdom as an international online super sensation in the making.

Essex through and through, Angela is 32 and has been for many years. Living with her cats Pinot and Grigio, she styles herself as a the authentic voice of real people, tackling such heady subjects as minimalist cooking (good), dating (bad) and local board game groups (could go either way.) Linking these, and their effectiveness in establishing her as a global mega-brand, she shares her reasonably priced all-you-can-eat buffet of life stories: the highs, the lows and the ones that only make sense when the punchline comes at the end.

An hour of pop, parodies and puns, it’s a shower of silliness in a world all too consumed with what other people think.

Speaking of which...

“A cheerily endearing persona...wordplay is enjoyably convoluted...Crowd pleasing” - Chortle.

“Spontaneous wit and humour” - Buxton Fringe Review

“You won’t begrudge the hour spent in her company” - North West End UK

“Hilarious” - Comedy Crowd TV

2022 Finalist in Drag Idol at The Eagle, Drag Idol at Via and Manchester’s answer to Ru Paul’s Drag Race, ‘The Crown’, hosted at The Brewers.

+ Over 10,000 Followers on TikTok!

This year we have two entry methods: Free & Unticketed or Pay What You Can
Free & Unticketed: Entry to a show is first-come, first served at the venue - just turn up and then donate to the show in the collection at the end.
Pay What You Can: For these shows you can book a ticket to guarantee entry and choose your price from the Fringe Box Office, up to 30 mins before a show. After that all remaining space is free at the venue on a first-come, first-served bases. Donations for walk-ins at the end of the show.



News and Reviews for this Show

At Home with Miss Angela Bra

September 2, 2021    North West End

At Home with Miss Angela Bra

“Do you have the socials?” an unsuspecting punter is asked. No, not some new contagion to be wary of, simply a way of finding out if the audience prefers Tik-Tok or Facebook.

Miss Angela Bra (better known as Andy Quirk) is busy holding court on life as a part-time musical teacher, rising social media star, and owner of two cats – Pinot and Grigio – treating us to her very own brand of banter, singing and occasional costume changes.

As with many drag-based acts, the success of these can live and die with the audience interaction and whilst Miss Angela (the full name pronounced like ‘Candelebra’ and just as classy she tells us) does her best with the small but warmly appreciative audience.

You can’t help but wonder though how the act could develop if unleashed on a slightly rowdier crowd where more acid-tongued barbs could be let loose to full effect. (“Don’t get too smug” she tells one couple smiling at the audience’s applause for their 20th anniversary milestone, “we were celebrating four weeks at the last show”).

Instead, we have a friendlier, cleaner whistle-stop tour through songs on Alpha males, shopping at Lidl, yellow discount stickers and hand-sanitiser use amongst others. The lyrics are clever, the singing occasionally off-kilter and the delivery falls somewhere between monologue and stand-up in a way that doesn’t quite hit the mark. A little tightening up could allow the funnier lines of the show to get the recognition they deserve.

But with plenty of audience participation, including Angela’s own amusing take on musical statues, it all in good fun and you won’t begrudge the hour spent in her company. Click Here For Review


At Home With Miss Angela Bra

August 24, 2021    Lou Reviews

At Home With Miss Angela Bra

Spending an hour on Zoom in the company of Miss ‘Angela Bra’ (rhymes with candelabra), the alter ego of Andy Quirk, is a lot of fun.

As a family were present on the Zoom call, Angela may have been a little cleaner than at her 18+ Bonkers Bingo shows, but her songs, games and patter are wholly professional.

With the odd joke inducing groan-infused laughter (a tale of a sapling and oak’s punchline being a particular case in point), the topics in this At Home were wide-ranging.

It is inevitable that any comedy turn these days has to mention Covid, and a song about hand sanitizer got this out of the way quick so we could move on to non-lockdown matters.
Promotional image for At Home With Angela Bra

Any woman aged forty worth her salt can chat for England about exes, exercise, social media presence, self image, value shopping, takeaways and Zooming, and Angela doesn’t disappoint on any of these topics.

The audience doesn’t get to sit on their laurels, either, as games and dancing are encouraged. It’s a method that works well for a live Zoom just the same as a club stage, and Angela is more of a warm friend down the pub than a spiky drag act.

Based now in the North of England, Quirk has got the sense of the women of the area spot on, and pitches Angela in the yellow sticker shopper (try saying that in a hurry!) and cat-owning part-time teacher pigeonhole perfectly. Click Here For Review


At Home With Miss Angela Bra

August 5, 2021    Chortle

At Home With Miss Angela Bra

This is a show about ‘being yourself, apparently. Although – irony aside for a performance conducted in character – that’s just a throwaway line to try to imbue the hour with some importance that it never really seeks to have. Rather, it’s all jolly but trivial nonsense: cheesy puns, song parodies and ‘join-in-at-the-back’ participation.

Angela Bra – ‘pronounced like Candelabra and is equally classy’, we’re told, amusingly – is a singer/songwriter, social media addict and part-time primary school music teacher from Essex. Not that any of those characteristics are particularly developed, but they offer the backdrop for a gag or two – and an excuse to crack out a recorder for one of the numbers.

She takes us through life in lockdown, with observations and songs (some original) about taking up exercising - or failing to - glitchy Zoom meetings and online shopping. Nothing particularly original, but Angela, the alter-ego of comic Andy Quirk, conveys it all with the upbeat spirit of a cruise ship party organiser. And some of the wordplay is enjoyably convoluted in a ‘dad joke’ way - which she sells well.

It’s a cheerily endearing persona, and she will get you taking part, whatever your initial reluctance. Like the rewritten hits that feature prominently (eg, Stuck In The Lidl With You) she – and indeed the whole show – is crowd-pleasing but a little basic.

Those limitations become more exposed the deeper into the hour we plunge. The songs, especially, are samey as the electro-beat of a pre-programmed keyboard does not make for much variety. And we’d like to get to know the character better than the shallow references to her life allow. For that reason, contrasting herself with her strait-laced, responsible brother proves one of the better ideas as it fleshes out her persona just that little bit more.

So as it stands, although there’s plenty of jollity here, this Bra has too much padding. Click Here For Review



Press & Media for this Show

Angela Bra: Life Lessons