Combine two of the most successful standup shows of the past two years – Bridget Christie's A Bic for Her and Luisa Omielan's What Would Beyoncé Do? – and you wouldn't be far off what Katherine Ryan's offering with her tart new show. Just when you think it's trashy – lots of backchat about Kate Middleton and Harry Styles – Ryan develops a feminist argument. Then, just as it's shaping up to be another welcome anti-sexist standup set, she starts shaking her booty in tribute to Beyoncé, whose current preferred identity – Mrs Carter – rather undermines her feminist credentials.
I can't claim, then, that the London-based Canadian's new show feels thrillingly original. But neither is it secondhand: Ryan is her own woman, and brings the force of her flamboyant, barbed personality to bear on this inquiry into celebrity, sex and single motherhood. There's a section on seeing her four-year-old twerking, while another marvels that nowadays "we keep better track of celebrities than aircraft". She confides behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt about Tulisa and Cheryl Cole, and shares an aghast outsider's perspective on the role of the "glamour model" ("What are you modelling? Coils?") in British life.
Some of the blether about Miley Cyrus and Made in Chelsea is throwaway, and her roleplay mocking empowerment-by-pole-dancing is mainly a good-natured excuse to make an audience member look silly. A section on protecting her sex life from infant interruption treads familiar ground, but is enlivened by Ryan's gaudy mime and the incongruous dialogue held with her daughter through a locked bathroom door. The best is kept till last, with Ryan's provocatively upbeat closing riff about her abortion. It's not a campaigning routine, but it generates an exciting frisson – which Ryan could probe and play with more as the show (touring this autumn) develops. Meanwhile, it's an enjoyable hour's standup: heartfelt, gossipy and sharp-tongued in equal measure.
• Until Saturday. Box office: 020 7478 0100.
