London-based New Yorker Sara Barron is more human firecracker than stand-up comedian. From the moment she strides onstage and starts talking about how tight her jeans are, to her final story in which she has her own sideways take on #metoo, the pace never drops. If the National Grid goes down, the electricity she generates could light up London.
Barron’s 2018 debut, For Worse, homed in on her her marriage to a wimpy Englishman and bagged her a Best Newcomer nomination at the Edinburgh Fringe. This sequel, Enemies Closer, finds the judgmental joker unpacking the nature of modern friendship.
How, for example, as we age we stay friends with people we despise. It’s easier to wait until one of you dies, she suggests, than tell them you hate them. Her theme is a flexible peg on which to hang a succession of riotous routines.
Some are little more than full-throttle listicles, ripping into a certain talk show host, Baby on Board signs and anyone who writes short Whatsapp messages rather than paragraphs. The targets are not always profound but, boy, does she sell her gags, pulling faces and hurling herself around.
This is brutally entertaining comedy for brutal times. There are echoes of Katherine Ryan and Joan Rivers in her no-holds-barred sex-based riffs, but Barron is carving out a niche for herself as an acid-tongued anecdotalist.
Say hello to the new queen of mean.
Until March 21 (020 7478 0100, sohotheatre.com)
