You could piece together Natalie Palamides’ remarkable new show, Nate, by splicing some of the great fringe comedies of the last half-decade. Adam Riches’ rowdy burlesques on alpha masculinity are in there, as is Zoë Coombs Marr’s cross-dressing satire on sexism, Dave. It’s hard not to recall Adrienne Truscott’s game-changing show about rape jokes, Asking for It. Then there’s Palamides’ own Laid, which won her the best newcomer title last year and whose eccentric, silly-but-suggestive atmosphere is recreated here.
It is a potent cocktail: a goofy interactive comedy about a macho “douchebag”, with a confrontational sting in its tale. Nate starts superbly, as Palamides – disguised under a lumberjack coat, biker boots, shaggy moustache and marker-pen chest hair – motorbikes on stage to a cock-rock soundtrack. She is chugging cans, toting fake phalluses and flaunting her 2D masculinity.
What follows is part sexual propriety workshop, part biography of the US comic’s loud but lonesome alter ego. A love rival in the audience is challenged to a fight, and no holds are barred. Another, identified as Nate’s buddy, is obliged to dry Nate after Palamides showers on stage. That she is a near-naked woman (albeit with a pendulous prosthetic penis) pretending to be a man provides the show’s substructure of daftness. On top, Palamides builds increasingly edgy comedy exploring sexual behaviour and consent in the Time’s Up era.
In the final section, Nate goes on a date with his art teacher, Miss Jackson, who gets squiffy and comes on strong. What follows is brought to explicit life by Palamides, then opened up to the audience’s interpretation. When considering our verdict, it is a factor that the show isn’t, as in Coombs Marr’s Dave, hostile to its protagonist. Nate is presented affectionately and has progressive views on consent. The show isn’t didactic: it’s playful, stoopid – and beautifully performed by this fearless clown-comic.
We’re left with a dilemma of modern sexual mores, and the impression that – far from peddling PC orthodoxies, as some would have us believe – comedy is staking out new ground in the conversation on sex and gender. There are big, uneasy, cathartic laughs to be had there, and Palamides knows how to find them.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
