To say that Jordan Gray made an eye-catching entrance into comedy would be quite the understatement. Her debut Is It a Bird? wowed the Edinburgh fringe, and made her the first transgender performer to headline the London Palladium. Then she stripped naked on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live, and unleashed a transphobic storm. That’s the context (she’s a huge success; she’s received death threats) for an hour she admits may be subject to “difficult second show syndrome”. Acknowledging that is very on-brand: Gray is self-aware bordering on self-completely-fascinated.
And she’s got plenty to be fascinated by: Is That a C*ck in Your Pocket … showcases a performer with lashings of panache and no filter. In song and standup, the show opens on the attack, with joke after joke about her status as a woman with talent, a ravening ego – and with a penis too. One song, from an act oft-likened in flamboyance to her Essex compatriot Russell Brand, tells us she wants to “fuck myself with my own dismembered shlong”. Several gags recycle old-school sexism into edgy gender-bending humour. Another routine itemises the four categories of death threat she’s received.
Just as Gray feared, it’s not as big-hitting a show as her first. There’s some filler: a weak skit about her Czech wife’s malapropisms; another about Martin Luther King. There’s an emotive finale addressing the difficulties of being trans in 2025 – but it’s hard to take at face value, because nothing hitherto invites us to take Gray remotely seriously. She’s a brilliant entertainer, and a wind-up merchant, but she’s also a bundle of contradictions, her standpoint shifting according to whatever’s likely to be funniest or most outrageous at any given moment.
Here, that includes a defence of Donald Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” remarks, lots of very funny gags tilting at straw men (and some not-so-straw men) in the gender wars, and an explosive denouement with a fantastic callback spring-loaded inside it. It adds up to a strong sophomore offering, which – if it doesn’t soar quite as high as Is It a Bird? – will easily keep Gray’s career airborne.
• At Soho theatre, London, until 31 May; then at Piccolo Tent at Assembly George Square Gardens, Edinburgh, 30 July to 24 August.
