Comedy Review: Sara Pascoe @ Soho Theatre

By Joelg Last edited 136 months ago
Comedy Review: Sara Pascoe @ Soho Theatre

Due to a bladder malfunction we were sat next to the gent's toilets throughout last night's Sara Pascoe show. We should immediately explain: not a malfunction malfunction. Nothing did explode. It’s just we arrived late and in dire need of doing urines, urines which we immediately did do, but at the very apex of us going ones, the audience started clapping and cheering and so we had to run out of the bathroom (although, and this we must add for the mums: hands were washed) and take the nearest stool available, which in this case obviously happened to be next to the gent's toilets. So we have established the geography.

What that meant is that we could do science, and that science is this: the Soho Theatre basement bar holds 140 people. (It does, we checked. “It’s for a review,” we said. We literally checked.) Of those hundred-forty, six entire people went to do wees. That's 8.4 per cent. Of that 8.4 per cent, 100 per cent were male, and 16.6 per cent (one person) was, it transpires, the actual cousin of the performer on stage. Not to call out Sara Pascoe's cousin for doing a piss or anything but, well. He did a piss. We know this because we were sat next to the gent’s.

And so anyway, on to the cousin of the second man in the room to do a piss, or, as she is otherwise known, 'Sara Pascoe'. Sara Pascoe was great. Sara Pascoe came on to the stage with a guitar – which normally at the start of a comedy show stands in place of a massive klaxon that shouts "I AM ABOUT TO BE WHIMSICAL", that screams "I AM GOING TO PLAY TWO CHORDS AND LOOK AROUND WITH SCARED EYES A LOT" – but used it sparingly and as a prop, and intersected her more-than-an-hour with these sort of… I mean I suppose you could call it dancing, if you were a lunatic. Technically it was dancing. Anyway: it was intersected a lot with asides, and even more people crossing in front of us in need of a wee.

A note on the duration: many comics approach the 59th minute of their hour-long set with a sort of palpable dread, with a nervous energy that is in turn passed on to the audience, communicated through a series of jokes rushed through while looking at a watch. Sara Pascoe didn't do that. We don't know if it's because she does not give one single shit about running over or if it's just her natural stage presence, but it worked. Other comics: take note. Everyone else: Don't be put off by the guitar. Don’t be put off by the fact that it is described as 'a musical' (it is not a musical). Don't do a piss halfway through.

Sara Pascoe: The Musical runs at Soho Theatre until 1 December. Buy tickets here.

Last Updated 28 November 2012