It takes a big personality to fill the Tarragon Mainspace, and also a big crowd. While Jenny Hamilton didn’t have the latter for her 11pm show of Klondyke: Stand Up Straight From The Yukon at the Toronto Fringe Festival, she certainly has the former. Possessing the classic Yukon values around propriety and the vocabulary to match, Hamilton takes us on a whirlwind that starts with an encounter with a homeless Tim Gunn-wannabe on a Toronto sidewalk and finishes… at the gynecologist’s office. There are plenty of laughs in between.

Hamilton is almost as much a storyteller as a comedian — her bits are long, and often make several stops before getting to the joke, or sustain a piece of physical comedy for a quite a while. Stand-up comedy is a very difficult undertaking — no audience is less forgiving than the one that has paid money to laugh — and a 60 minute stand up set is a Matterhorn.

In Klondyke: Stand Up Straight From The Yukon, I found a solidly funny 40 minute set, that seemed to have been padded and stretched in order to fill the entire hour. There were a few times I wanted to pass Hamilton a note to tell her that she didn’t, actually, have to use the entire time (just in case no one had mentioned it).

Yukon manners and idiosyncrasies get a tender treatment in this show, as do the various kinds and classifications of tourists that flow through the small-town capital of the territory. Plenty of lesbian humor and some zingers about gender round out a nicely observed set that’s certainly accessible to anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or territorial identity.

Her set also includes some uproarious political observations about members of America’s “Tea Party.” Quitting smoking gets a long bit that had my date chortling in recognition several times, though be advised: this is the show’s first moment of “Yukon values around propriety” (and if you are 100% always against poop jokes you might want to sit this one out). Grab your favorite lesbian and check this one out.

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