By the end, Evelyn Mok is blaming tiredness and asking her audience’s forgiveness. It’s been that kind of show: misfiring, fatally underpowered. We are left to speculate how well her show Bubble Butt might work on a good day, but the signs aren’t encouraging. A #MeToo-tinged account of the comedian’s sexual sense of self, her tale of grooming never really goes anywhere, nor are her jokes quite good enough to compensate.
Mok puts herself on the back foot straight away, needlessly referencing her small audience. (Not that small, in fact.) The opening section ranges across her “overflowing” identity as a bisexual, plus-size “hashtag WOC”. We hear how her mother warned “you can’t find a hubby if you’re chubby” and how she attracts a very particular – and not very appealing – category of man.
Not for the first time this fringe, that kind of material rings uneasy post-Hannah Gadsby. But it is more edifying than Mok’s section on her “sweaty puss”, and more coherent than her account of her attraction to both men and women, which barely makes sense. The words get mixed up in a gag about Louis CK and, as the show proceeds, authority drains.
Elsewhere, she is more adroit if not always original, with routines about non-white Barbie dolls and her Chinese mum’s disciplinary habits. The grooming story is timely and promising, but doesn’t develop, and soon Mok has to address her audience’s low-key response: “This has now become more of an agreeing show than a comedy show.” Alas, she’s right.
