Rose Matafeo has watched a lot of romcoms, and decided that she’s classic “sassy best friend” material – hence the title of this new show. But what does that mean, and is it a good thing to be? A year on from the New Zealander’s whirlwind fringe debut with Finally Dead, this latest offering interrogates – with the lightest of touches – the personalities on offer to women, and one way in particular that those personalities can be tampered with.
It’s less gimmicky and more assured than its predecessor and makes a real relatable virtue out of Matafeo’s self-doubt, as a woman with “enough confidence to do standup, but not enough to wear a hat”. As with Finally Dead, the show starts on the upbeat and stays there, as Matafeo performs a dippy romcom title sequence, then launches into an account of her own relationship with that Hollywood genre. “Classic sassy best friend,” it turns out, might just be a euphemism for non-white and curly-haired. Matafeo’s claims to sassiness are undermined by recollections of the slogan T-shirts she failed to pull off as a tween – then re-established by a groovy mime routine that excavates the unexpected secrets behind Michael Jackson’s vocal tics.
As that demonstrates, Matafeo’s comedy is goofy and fun-loving as a priority. But alongside the dopey flirting with a man on the front row (cue romantic music whenever she sexily removes her specs), she’s got worthwhile things to say about the options available to young women, which transcend the five Spice Girl personality types on offer in Matafeo’s teenage magazines. The hardest-hitting material is about the emotional damage that can be wrought by the pill. Matafeo enacts a dialogue with contraceptive technologists in an imagined “man-cave”, where they strain to argue that the inconvenience of condom use is remotely as serious.
As with Finally Dead, the last 10 minutes are padded out with a series of “impressions”, unrelated to her theme – albeit amusing, as with her self-hating satnav voice or the Lion King dancer who thinks he’s left the oven on. I’m guessing Matafeo feels a bit sheepish about rounding off the show with a pat conclusion, but she needn’t be. Amid the looser-fitting routines about misogynistic rap or her high-school musical career, she builds a persuasive argument for freeing young women from personality pressure, complicated or otherwise by the side-effects of the pill. And above all, she’s effervescently entertaining.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 27 August.
