Rising star in a class of her own
simultaneously languid and slightly twitchy. But he is an assured storyteller, taking his audience with him.
The epic misunderstanding he had with a neighbour in a backyard is retold to gales of disbelieving laughter.
He muses on animals, babies and outer space – gently reminding the audience that we are all spinning around on a little rock quite close to the sun.
The strange dreams women have about him are only incidental to the show. Or are they? This delightful hour has a dream-like quality, where the boundaries are blurred between what we know and what we don’t.
There are some strange things about playing a gig on a bus. Quirk keeps hitting his head on the roof and there is a well known comedian on the front row, sitting next to a man eating pie and mash. But our hero is unfazed. Confident, assured and in control, he seems perfectly at home. CLAIRE SMITH Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) JJJJ Sophie Willan’s breakthrough show last year, about her experiences in the care system as the daughter of a heroin-addicted mother, brought her a whole new following of Radio 4 listeners.
Where once her upbringing held her back, now her socalled brand as a northern, working-class woman has various commissioners and the powers-that-be falling over themselves to share her “voice”, even if they’re less enamoured by her personality and the harsh pragmatism of her life decisions to date.
Branding is a constricting exercise that smooths rough dissonance, such as her mother being a “vegan smackhead” who couldn’t cook, prompting the comic
0 Sophie Willan reveals that she turned to escorting for cash to marvel at the quirkiness of what this woman would and wouldn’t put into her body.
Such choices, and certain feminist ideals are a luxury, and Willan discloses that as a struggling actor unable to find paid work, she turned to escorting. I’d be wary of revealing this as a spoiler. But she’s begun talking about it in interviews and though shocking, it maybe shouldn’t be as startling as it is, given of paedophilia, the nature of art, or one man’s desperate attempts to recapture the good fortune that made him famous in the first place? SUSAN MANSFIELD the economic realities of where she found herself.
In other comic’s shows, a sex work past might form the entirety of the hour. And there are some grim details related but not a little humour too, which Willan shares with take-me-as-i-am charm, having unapologetically taken the stage with a twerk and some vigorous “tit shaking” at the front row.
She can’t play the happy hooker though. Blunt and decidedly unsentimental about northern nostalgia, hers is, sad to say, still a rare perspective in comedy, with her background seemingly still good for revelations for the cosseted chattering classes, even if she’s avowedly wary about being seen as a purveyor of poverty porn.
Emotionally probing and intellectually prodding, with a wry, sardonic delivery, Willan is a rather more rounded stand-up than that, undeniably on the rise. JAY RICHARDSON strange, you are left pondering the power of the incantation and rethinking the way jokes work.
This is a strange broth of a show, with little bits of many things bubbling away in there, but it is highly enjoyable. KATE COPSTICK