The new Joan Rivers? Not quite, but thoroughly enjoyable anyway
Katherine Ryan
Garrick
★★★★★
Katherine Ryan is fast becoming one of British comedy’s biggest exports, although – like many of our leading lights – she’s actually an import. Since moving to the UK a decade ago, the Canadian stand-up has headlined Live at the Apollo, recorded a hit Netflix special and become a fixture on TV panel shows (she’s soon to star in Netflix’s first foray into the genre, The Fix, alongside Jimmy Carr).
In that time, Ryan has also raised a nine-year-old daughter, Violet, becoming a poster-mum for single parenthood after giving the boot to her cheating boyfriend, whose infidelity inspired her 2014 show.
It is Violet’s voice – very amusingly imitated in cut-glass RP – that dominates this new show, Glitter Room, bringing out a warmer side to Ryan’s acerbic humour, as she tries to teach her daughter about self-sufficiency.
The result is more endearing than exciting. Ryan spends almost as much time championing unlikely role models (she’s a Kardashian fan) as she does in attack mode, though she’s best when laying into sexism’s doublestandards. A 35-yearold single father is considered a young, eligible catch, she notes, while even the most successful single mothers the same age are often dismissed as past-it, piteous figures. No self-pity for Ryan, though. Her confidence could bend iron bars. That it’s a kind of superpower becomes clear in the show’s darkest anecdote, about fearlessly confronting a would-be home invader.
That story is delivered breezily, and there’s the rub: Glitter Room’s polish leaves it all hitting the same note, without much light and shade. The only exception is a sharp riff on Hamilton’s sexual politics, which proves she can belt out the musical’s songs just as well as its cast.
Ryan’s broad appeal is undeniable; one fan flew all the way from Italy to catch Wednesday’s performance. That following can only grow when a recording of this unadventurous but thoroughly enjoyable show lands on Netflix.
More than one critic has called Ryan “the new Joan Rivers”, which isn’t quite right: Glitter Room lacks the provocative frisson of Rivers’s best work. If you’re after a North American comic who truly channels that frankly-i-don’t-give-a-damn spirit, try 2018 Best Newcomer Award nominee Sara Barron, whose very blue show, For Worse, bites into motherhood with devilish wit. It’s on across town at the Bill Murray pub on Tuesday, and (by contrast with Ryan’s steep West End prices) tickets will only set you back a fiver.