Oh gosh, where to start with Creep. Richardson isn’t a comedian; she’s a performance artist - she makes that clear - but this particular performance comes with belly laughs. Such is her presence; you soon forget that this is essentially a one-hour slideshow PowerPoint presentation - which begins with her 2024 performance piece, 100 dates, where she spent Valentine’s Day going on over 100 five-minute online dates.
That prompted viral success, catching the attention of an older comedian, who to slid into her DM’s with a couple of cheesy chat-up lines, followed by an unsolicited dick, some sexting, a couple of horny telephone calls and, ultimately, a hastily-sent voice note from the comedian’s manager telling Richardson that this is a trend for the male comedian but he’s had his fun now and it has to stop, so please never contact him again - and by the way, they deleted the photos she sent but they absolutely didn’t look at them while doing it. Richardson plays us the voice note via her PowerPoint and repeats the latter section: “sounds like someone who looked,” she says drolly.
Her PowerPoint is almost a character in itself, and Richardson wields her clicker expertly, plotting out little twists amongst the slides as she dissects the Instagram comments on Vice and Dazed posts about her work. And she catches us off-guard too, as she lays out more of her soul than you might expect, as well as a glimpse of something the male comedian would likely prefer we hadn’t seen amongst a family Christmas montage. Her parents are in the crowd tonight - you might have assumed they would have preferred the same, until her father shouts out: ‘it wasn’t mine!’ Comedy runs in the family, it seems.
Her relationship (if you can call it that) with the male comedian marked a shift in Richardson’s life and career, marking the end of another relationship, sending Richardson into an obsessive pursuit across Edinburgh and the Raya dating app, intro therapy, and ending with her performance piece, Temporary - a piece of reclamation in which she got the name of every one of her ex-lovers’ mothers tattooed onto her ribs.
Richardson plays us an audio note from one of the mothers, whom she hadn’t met - it’s the most touching moment in an insightful hour. It should be the perfect ending, except it’s hard to put a morally questionable male comedian down - another slide follows with another DM, another cheesy chat-up line, and Richardson is here to give us the dirt (and sell us a cap emblazoned with ‘male comedian’, or ‘I dated Harriet Richardson’ in honour of 100 Dates, afterwards).
Which is essentially what the hour is: Richardson giving us the lowdown on the most ridiculous aspects of her life - the highs and the lows with laughs and tenderness along the way. It’s a piece of restorative justice - whether or not the other side agrees. No, it’s not a comedy stand-up routine, and it’s not performance art in the sense of 100 Dates and Temporary - but it’s one hell of a show. I just wish I’d bought one of those caps…
Harriet Richardson: Creep is at Pleasance Courtyard Below, Edinburgh, until 30 August 2026 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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