Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
Endearing storytelling carries the day in Alissa Anne Jeun Yi’s show, combining standup, poetry and rap
Alissa Anne Jeun Yi’s flyers call her Edinburgh fringe debut a “one-woman spoken-word and rap show” but Love Songs, tucked into the corner of Underbelly at Cowgate, comes across more like standup comedy. For most of the show, Jeun Yi bounces with endearing energy from anecdote to anecdote, all loosely connected to the theme of love.
With only occasional music and props kept to a minimum, it’s the storytelling that carries the piece. We hear how her parents met at university, the love lessons she learned watching soap operas in Hong Kong, and how her mixed-race Chinese and white heritage plays into the way her womanhood is viewed by the world. The sharp observations inspire genuine laughs. One, about fancying someone with a minimal triangle wrist tattoo – “it says so much whilst saying so little!” – is a reminder millennials can really nail our own self-ridicule.
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