I knew I was going to enjoy watching Tori Piskin’s Poor Little Rich Girl the moment I walked through the doors of the theatre and heard Gwen Stefani’s ‘Rich Girl’ playing over the speakers, followed by the Gossip Girl theme tune as Piskin’s walk out music.
Tori Piskin grew up in the upper east side of Manhattan and was raised by her father—a dentist—and her mother—unemployed and out of touch. Lots of her comedy pokes fun the absurdity of wealthy individuals in New York and she describes herself as “an anthropologist” of the upper east side, a description which certainly piqued my interest
as an anthropology student myself.
Piskin is what would happen if “Gossip Girl meets the Magic School Bus lady,” to use the comedian’s own words, and her show Poor Little Rich Girl is her way of exposing the lives of her friends and family in Manhattan. For me the highlight of the show was hearing all about the bullying Tori Piskin receives from her loafer-wearing aristocratic six-year-old nephew.
Piskin’s storytelling has a thick descriptive quality that can make even the most mundane details seem hilarious. She is excellent and giving the audience exactly the right information to visualise the Manhattan elites she describes in her show, whether that is describing her friend Eleanor’s ridiculously oversized sunglasses and handbag or physically pulling back the skin on her face to replicate her mother’s facelift. This immerses the audience into her stories from the upper east side letting the audience feel as though they too are a part of this world.
Poor Little Rich Girl contains many great one-liners from Piskin, and although some punchlines were quite obviously written with American audiences in mind, her sense of humour is also clearly loved by audiences on the other side of the Atlantic judging by the roars of laughter from the crowd throughout Piskin’s show. I would highly recommend Poor Little Rich Girl to anyone in need of a good laugh, because let’s face it who doesn’t love making fun of posh people?
Poor Little Rich Girl has finished its run at the Edinburgh Fringe
Photos via The Space
