ED FRINGE 2023 REVIEW | Niamh Denyer: Get Blessed
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Reviewer - Jordan
*Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review
Get Blessed is a hilarious satirical look at how those who lead our funerary celebrations are in fact people too, and sometimes, not particularly nice people, but funny nonetheless.
Before the course begins we are given a warm welcome as a tin of biscuits is passed around while we all get settled. We’re introduced to our 2 day “Non-deonminatationl Funerary Celebrant Training Course”, one of 20 courses offered by our teacher for the day, Aine. It is laid out from the get go that no expense has been spared on this course… By ourselves, as Aine is very frugal and willing to charge for anything and everything, including paper and ink costs to print our certificates.
Aine takes our hand and guides us through the world of Funerary Celebrants including how to be spiritual without being overtly religious, delivering empathetic and emotional support while remaining professionally numb. “Juzzing up” the life of the deceased so they sound less boring, quashing any possible comeptition who may wish to steal our clients, and how to make the most money possible in the funeral game, even if we have to be less than honest to do so. Once we are all prepared and on board, we move to day two and the culmination of the course where we as the students get to sit in on the funeral of the recently deceased as Aine delivers her sincere and heartfelt eulogy. Well, a eulogy at least.
Aine delivers a fantastic performance, peppering the comedy with just a touch of reality to reallly bring everything home and ensure all the jokes land while also providing a little bit (or some times plenty) of dark comedy to the show. She also brings aspects of her Irish upbringing to give a real sense of believeablity to a, very much, over the top character.
Thoroughly enjoyed and hope to be able to see her perform again.
