This review is from the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Ania Magliano’s meteoric rise has been at least partly fuelled by the idea that she’s the #relatable Gen-Z next door.
And that’s not entirely unfair. Small and charming and only just born in the twentieth century, she has a personable, intimate drawl wherein literally everything she says sounds like she’s imparting some great gossip. As with last year’s smash show ‘Absolutely No Worries If Not’, the subject here is a series of almost wilfully humdrum anecdotes from her own live. But there’s something brilliantly twisted about the way she pushes it too far, spinning her affable storytelling into something altogether more caustic.
‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ is nominally based on the idea that the worst thing to have ever happened to Magliano in her entire life is a very bad haircut. It’s a joke based upon a deft piece of doublethink. Clearly the haircut bothered her enormously, enough to elicit a very funny, lavishly theatrical anecdote about the experience. But it can’t possibly be the worst thing that has ever happened to her – even though she protests that it absolutely, definitely via the funniest and least repeatable gag of the entire show.
Magliano is #relatable, but it's her gift to be able to quite bleakly break that down as she goes on. She spins funny yarns about speed dating or boxing classes or being invited to a threesome and then pours a vat of acid over them, leaving the stories reduced to dark, twisted shards.
Playing a deliberately small room, Magliano sold her entire Edinburgh run out before the festival even started this year (though a couple of larger extra dates have been added and she’ll tour soon). Clearly stardom of some sort awaits. But she’s that good that even if she’s back in five years talking about all the yacht parties she now attends, it’ll still surely be drily brilliant.
