Had it been assembled by a jetpack manufacturer, Suzi Ruffell’s new show could hardly be better – or more conspicuously – engineered for uplift. Nocturnal is notionally a chronicle of the anxieties and maladroit moments that keep this 33-year-old awake at night – a conceit with leeway to include whichever outré stories and observations Ruffell pleases. The one about a stingray encounter in Australia. The one about her love of TV dating shows. The one about wandering through Hackney in nightwear with a hammer and an “indoor cat”. They’re all here, united only by our host’s infectious good cheer and heightened sense of social shame.
And also by the forbearance with which she weathers homophobic microaggressions along the way. There is Richard Hammond’s comment about ice cream being gay, and there is Disney’s lack of gay characters. In the face of which, Ruffell strikes a neat balance, making plain her impatience while refusing to have the smile wiped from her face.
She keeps the audience smiling, too, with a series of well-honed set-pieces mining big laughs – albeit on occasion from soft targets, such as the TV show Naked Attraction (“It’s cock o’clock!”) or the indignities visited upon her during a recent smear test. There is nothing adventurous about her brand of standup, but she does it very well, with bonhomie, a lively expressiveness and a fine line in funny voices, as when she plays Linda from Liverpool, a hetero alter ego improvised on holiday in homophobic Sri Lanka.
A crowd-pleasing closing number features callbacks aplenty, giving the illusion of structure to a show that is really just one entertaining anecdote after another. With regard to her standup career at least, this anxious act has nothing to worry about.
• At Soho theatre, London, 14-16 March and 23-25 April. And touring until 13 July.
