‘Scary. Brutal. Forthright.” That’s how Fern Brady finds herself described, much to her surprise. She can certainly be blunt, but no more so than many comics. Perhaps it’s the broad accent, which the West Lothian native tees up as the subject of Power and Chaos. The set begins with five minutes on how moving to London forced her to confront (anti-)Scottish stereotypes – a subject she then shelves and doesn’t address again for the rest of the show.
That’s in the nature of Power and Chaos, which barely makes an attempt to hang together as a coherent set, ending, apropos of nothing, with a set-piece about online animal videos. Which is fair enough, if the material hits big enough to render coherence unnecessary. That’s not always the case, though, in a set that keeps Brady’s career bubbling along nicely without quite bringing it to the boil.
As she ranges across her various subjects, you’re reminded of a handful of sets you’ve seen elsewhere. Some may call Brady forthright, but it’s notable how lightly (in contrast to Hannah Gadsby on autism) she glosses over the possibility she might have Asperger’s. Elsewhere, there’s cheap and uninspiring material on porn, and an account of Brady’s first “scandal in comedy”, that modern comic’s rite-of-passage whereby they alchemise 15 minutes of news-pages notoriety into live material. In Brady’s case, it involves a spat with the DUP after joking about Arlene Foster’s sexuality.
Not only does Brady refuse to flinch at that furore, she doubles down (you might even call it brutal), before segueing into a section on her bisexuality. She then covers her treatment – and that of women in general – on social media, forever judged on her looks as much as her comedy. On which, no new insights – but the jokes are appealingly tart. The strongest section is on Brady’s broodiness, the clash of tugging heartstrings and intellectual repugnance at the very thought of having babies. It feels richer than some of the standard-issue cynicism in a show from a comic less inclined to gild lilies than pluck off their petals.
At Soho Theatre, London, until 16 November.
