Her last tour, Success Story, found Sara Pascoe in the loved-up phase of recent new parenthood. Reader, she has now put that phase behind her. I Am a Strange Gloop finds our host staggering shell-shocked from the soft play area to the stage, with battle-hardened tales to tell from motherhood’s frontline. Ruthlessly banished from the centre of her own life, she now endures an existence “that makes The Handmaid’s Tale look progressive”, cleaning up after infant sons, fielding their erratic poos, playing receptacle and canvas for vomit and passing toilet brushes.
All that is amusing if familiar. So, too, her material on her manchild husband, which – coming from an act who once laid siege to gender essentialism – cleaves surprisingly to stereotype. Where our host gets sharper is in the philosophical dimension she gives this new chapter of life, conjuring with a sense of self so undermined by becoming a mum, and by shouldering adult responsibilities, that she’s not sure what’s left of prior-Pascoe – see one terrific joke about escaping, like her two kids did before her, from her own body.
There are other ways to cheat biology, of course: the show’s second recurring subject is the transhumanist fantasy of remaining forever young. There’s also a counterintuitive section on AI porn, and a story about meeting Robbie Williams that brings middle-aged Sara into contact with the teenage Take That fan she used to be.
This may not add up to as tight or conceptually rich a show as the 44-year-old has delivered in years gone by. Her closing set-piece, a new chapter she’s written to add to the Bible, is apropos of nothing that precedes it. But she delivers some fine material – about Sisyphus, revolting against capitalism, and an excellent running joke (in more ways than one) about Paula Radcliffe – even if doesn’t unite into a coherent whole. Forever young? That’s not happening. Forever interesting? Without a doubt.
