American comedian and theatre-maker Desiree Burch won the Funny Women award two years ago, then bagged a Poster award at the Edinburgh fringe by representing her own face as a collage of penises. This is the show in question, of which her “dick pic” material comprises, if you will, a small part. But Burch ranges widely across the landscape of racism, sex, family and her own autobiography. It feels like a lifetime of material crammed into one show, enough of which is insightful and heartfelt to make This Is Evolution a compelling 75 minutes.
It helps that Burch has ample charisma and a pleasingly bull-in-a-china-shop approach to social anthropology. She starts by reclaiming the word “fat”, joking about her size, and our discomfort at her doing so. That doesn’t feel confrontational: Burch is our friend, not our aggressor. She is eager to share, her easy amusement puncturing anxiety around routines about the “remedial racism” of the Brits, say, or women trying to outdo one another’s low self-esteem.
The need to transcend self-consciousness becomes the theme, albeit retroactively. Burch shows how even innocuous behaviour – such as parents asking children: “What do you want to be when you grown up?” – train us to consider our (current) selves inadequate. She’s at her best when she’s this thoughtful. She’s diverting, but less striking, when riffing more conventionally on bad diarrhoea or the horror of sleeping with someone born in the 1990s. It’s an eye-catching show from a comedian deservedly on the rise.
• At Soho theatre, London, until 23 March. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
