Maxine Jones starts the UK tour of her show Invisible Woman at the Other Place, Brighton on January 23.
THE UK comedy website Chortle, lists Maxine in the top ten ‘feminist fatales’ calling her “outstandingly funny.”
A review from the Buxton Fringe festival said: “Maxine raises questions and issues around gender roles in a gentle yet probing way. The audience loved it”.
“I’ve some lovely dates lined up,” said Maxine. “As well as the Other Place, I’ll be at the Leicester Square Theatre London, the Palace Theatre Redditch and the Rondo, Bath, as well as a few festivals.”
Maxine runs a comedy club in Blackrock, Dublin, upstairs at the Wicked Wolf, every Tuesday fortnight.
“I particularly encourage women to get up and have a go – just to balance things out a bit. There are some excellent young – and older – women comics now getting a foothold on the circuit. Wicked Wolf always has some on the bill.”
Maxine came to comedy late in life, though she’d always been a fan. She studied French at Durham University and worked as an EFL teacher and secretary in northern Italy and Paris before settling in London, where she worked for Methuen publishers, several magazines (including the launch issue of Hello) and for the BBC, before leaving a staff job at the Independent to move to Dublin on a whim in 1990. Mercier published her book Successful Irish Businesswomen in 1992.
Working on the Sunday Tribune she met the father of her three sons, whom she divorced in 1996, when divorce was introduced to Ireland. She set up her own magazine, Suburb, from home and worked as a freelance columnist, reviewer and travel writer.
Maxine has cycled from Turkey through Syria, the Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Egypt; and around south India; drove an old VW Scirocco across the Sahara to the Gambia; and a Citroen 2CV over the Atlas mountains to Morocco and back. Mostly during these years, she was trying to keep the house clean and the boys fed and out of trouble.
Now they are reared Maxine is focusing on writing and performing comedy and is busy preparing for her third Edinburgh show.
“I’ll probably call it Full Circle,” she said. “I’m interested in how little we learn over a lifetime and in the circular nature of practically everything. This is in line with my wish to return to England, which I’ve spent most of my life rejecting, but which I’ve recently come to appreciate.”
Event: Invisible Woman with Maxine Jones
Where: The Other Place, above Bar Broadway, Steine Street, Brighton
When: Friday, January 23
Time: 7.30pm
To book tickets online, click here:
For more information about Maxine, click here:
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