Francesca Martinez tells us she had been in bed for two years with "burnout" when she resolved to make a show "about all the things I felt I needed to say". The resulting comedy set, In Deep, is never quite as vital as that build-up leads us to expect. But what it lacks in urgency, the show makes up for with Martinez's sweet nature, as she makes her idealistic, if conventional, plea for a world in which we stop labelling and start loving ourselves and one another.
Familiar subjects are broached with intelligence, as Martinez blames capitalism for keeping us insecure to sell its products, and suggests how far we have come from Christian values by imagining Jesus on The Apprentice: "You've had your last supper, you're fired!" This is part of an extended riff on religion in which Martinez proposes a more economical way for zealous Muslims to dress: instead of covering women's entire bodies in cloth, why not use just a thin strip to cover men's eyes?
Martinez, who has cerebral palsy, certainly is not limited to jokes about disability - although it does generate, perhaps unsurprisingly, much of her most striking material. She makes the point that people should not be defined by their weaknesses by asking a punter what he cannot do (concentrate on boring plays, as it happens), then patronising him for five minutes: "Does that mean you cannot have sex?" She also forwards the robust and satisfyingly tasteless case that if it is OK to abort a disabled foetus, so should it be with one that will grow up voting Tory. Martinez calls herself "a wobbly comedian", but on this evidence, her success is built on firm foundations.
· At Reading South Street Centre (01189 606060), on Saturday. Then touring.
