Emotional and raw; her most personal show yet
Sara Pascoe: Ladsladslads Pleasance Courtyard
Last year was a bit of a mixed bag for Sara Pascoe. On the plus side, her memoir-cum-manifesto
Animal was published to rave reviews. Less pleasingly, the stand-up found herself single for the first time since 2001, after 16 years of (in her euphemistic phrase) “overlapping relationships”, following a break-up with stand-up John Robins. Happily, though, this crisis has resulted in an hour of brilliant comedy.
Robins is currently at the Fringe in the very same venue telling his side of the story (in a show that yesterday earned a Best Show nomination for this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards, while, adding insult to injury, Pascoe was a surprising omission from the list). But where Robins’s show rakes over the events that led to their separation, Pascoe’s
Ladsladslads looks forward rather than back, tackling her newfound singledom.
The mixture of political savvy and self-deprecation that marked her previous work is still in evidence here, but now – having opened the door to a more candid, confessional style with her memoir – there is a bracing emotional honesty to her material, too. It’s her most personal show yet, and perhaps her most accomplished.
Her attempt to forge a post-robins life began, she tells us, with an underwhelming yoga retreat in Costa Rica, “where we all wanted the same thing – to use peace, love and creativity to be less fat”. Nonetheless, the trip inspired an epiphany: “Human beings are meant to be sold separately. We’re not Twixes, we’re Pepperami.” Cue tales of independence, and the memorable story of “how my vibrator saved the world”.
Dressed like “both halves of a Strictly couple” (bow tie, white tuxedo jacket, fishnet tights), Pascoe adopts a scatterbrained, goofy persona that belies the serious talent at work. She has a hyper-inquisitive mind, and everything – including her sexual issues with Robins – is grist to her comic mill.
Everything, that is, except for a recent holiday in Paris, where she spent Valentine’s Day alone. “Nothing funny happened there,” she deadpans. “But Sara, why are you telling us this? Because otherwise that trip is not tax-deductible.”
While in Paris she noticed something unexpected, she tells us. The city looked different, because for the first time she could appreciate its famous landmarks without her partner’s head getting in the way. On the evidence of the razor-sharp observations in Ladsladslads, that new, clear-sighted perspective is doing her a world of good.
Pascoe is one of the most immediately likeable voices in comedy, and here uses her weaponsgrade charm to lead the audience down some unlikely paths. For starters, she asks, “Why are we so weird about incest?”
Her crush on a (purely imaginary) brother develops into a deliciously outré running gag, and the funniest section of the show is built on an opinion that’s almost as taboo.
“Art is rubbish,” she proclaims, dispatching painting, theatre and music in turn. Thanks to her musician father, she’s particularly tough on jazz (“a stressed offbeat just reminds me of being neglected”).
But despite her insistence that stand-up isn’t an art, the ending of Ladsladslads is so beautifully structured – weaving all the hour’s ideas together in a way that is knowing, yet effortless – it has far more in common with a good jazz solo than she’d like to admit.