Features / Marjolein releases full comedy show on YouTube as rise continues
The comedian will also take her latest Fringe show O to Mareel in June
TWO award-nominated sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, a first ever live show on YouTube and a homecoming gig at Mareel to come.
She has been signed by major comedy company Off the Kerb Productions, and now counts Kevin Bridges, Michael McIntyre and Alan Carr as label mates.
So why does comedian Marjolein Robertson still fret about where the next joke is coming from?
“Every time something goes well all I can think is, ‘what joke am I going to write next? Will I able to justify those nice words with my next show?’” she told Shetland News.
Robertson needn’t stress. She is currently riding the crest of a comedic wave, finding more work than ever before having moved permanently to London, and about to take her 2024 Fringe show O on tour around the UK.
She is also in the process of writing the conclusion to that Fringe trilogy, with the first parts – Marj and O – debuting to critical acclaim and award nominations.
A 48-minute video of Marj has now been released on YouTube by Off the Kerb, and Robertson – who has ADHD – explained part of the reason for that is so she is able to remember it in future.
“I never write any of the shows down, all of them just live in my brain,” she laughed.
“People have said about past shows I’ve done and I don’t remember them.”
The other reasons for releasing Marj are two-fold, she explains. One is that it’s “quite a nice thing to do, because not everyone can come and see the show.”
And the other is that it is a weighty subject matter for a comedy show, after Robertson found herself “in an abusive relationship”.
She says the show signposts places people can seek help from if they find themselves in a similar scenario, and said Marj’s Fringe run saw a number of people come up to her to share their own experiences.
“Marj is a show I was really proud of, so I didn’t want that one to be lost,” Robertson added.
Family and friends who saw the show for the first time, either at the Fringe at a homecoming gig in Mareel last year – said they had no idea what she had gone through.
Asked if she was more nervous about performing Marj in front of people she knew in Shetland, Robertson replied: “Big time. It was such an emotional, personal story so I knew it would be a tricky one.
“I booked Mareel to be the last gig of the tour because I knew I would never have to do it again.”
If Marj was about the mind, then the follow-up O was all about the body – specifically about the menstrual cycle, a subject Robertson again wanted to bring to the forefront.
She said her first glimpse of the miracle of life was a sheep giving birth to a lamb outside her window – but joked that while that subject was fine for the kitchen table, periods were not.
That, Robertson said, led to her almost dying at the age of 16 after she suffered an internal haemorrhage that she mistook for a period.
If that doesn’t sound like ripe comedic ground so far, Robertson said she thought O was her funniest show yet – funnier even than Marj, which garnered numerous five star reviews at the Fringe.
Part of O’s success was its commitment to using fake blood as a device for Robertson – an adept storyteller – to help her audience relate to her history.
However, that strive for realness proved to be too much for some.
“We had nine fainters and 18 walk-outs,” Robertson laughed.
“At the very first preview in Brighton we had two fainters.
“I started to think, ‘this show is going to be a problem. This going to be a long summer’.”
She said audience-goers were given “plenty of warnings” and that anyone turning up randomly on the day – as many do at the Fringe – were told exactly what they were about to see.
But Robertson said she was determined to bring the subject of menstruation to a wider audience.
“There should be a place that it can be spoke about,” she said.
“It affects half the population – it affects your work, how you’re feeling and what you’re able to do.”
If she ever gets serious she soon returns to a joke, and Robertson said one friend from Shetland told her after seeing O: “Weel, I keen a lot aboot you noo”.
Robertson was signed to Off the Kerb productions last year, joining an illustrious list of stadium-selling comedians in doing so.
In typical fashion for Robertson, she explained the deal came about after she mistook what transpired to be a business meeting with an Off the Kerb rep to be coffee with a friend.
And when they asked her if she had anything she had been in, she showed them a string of old Maddrim Media videos and Heavy Metal Buffet recordings made in her brother Dirk’s basement.
“If they had told me before that I could have been signed by them, I would have done something different,” she said.
Despite – or maybe because of – those videos Off the Kerb took her on, and she said they had been opening doors for her across the UK ever since.
Her star continues to rise, despite her thinking that her career at reached its summit when Marj received its first five star review.
“That was the nicest thing I’d ever read, and my brain just went ‘well, I’ve peaked’,” she laughed.
Though she is mostly modest about her achievements, when pressed she admitted it was nice to have battled her way into the comedy industry as an outsider from Shetland.
“There is a lot of nepotism in this industry,” she said.
“There are a lot of people who know the people to get them into the right things, who know the right things to say.”
She joked her “nepo baby moment” was getting a job in the council’s planning department with her dad – which she gave up to pursue comedy.
“I feel like I’ve elbowed my way in to a room that I shouldn’t be in but they’ve allowed me to stay,” Robertson said.
“I’m really happy that someone has come in from the outside with no connection and gotten into it.”
Marj is available to watch online here and Robertson’s homecoming performance of O at Mareel on Saturday 14 June is on sale through Shetland Arts.
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