With last year’s
A diverting way to spend some time in the late afternoon.
Pohl has had a difficult year. Belongings packed into storage, rendered homeless, picking dead rats out of her mail box... she’s only doing the show because it gives her somewhere to be for a few hours a day. No, things aren’t going well and she wants to tell us how they got so bad. So we trace a few episodes in the life of a struggling actress whose soul is slowly being sucked out as she works graveyard shifts as a waitress in a hipster meatball restaurant.
As she narrates a tale which takes in romantic frustration, movie success, infidelity and a cast of characters which includes famous actors and lascivious grandparents, Pohl creates a compelling narrative. The biggest laughs come from the portrayal of these characters as the comedian displays an impressively wide range of accents as well as a very funny rendition of a goldfish facing an existential crisis.
Elsewhere some of the punchlines are less well conceived, and a lot of the throwaway gags barely register as Pohl rattles through her tale. However, even when the jokes don’t hit home the vibrancy of the performance is still engaging enough to hold the interest. The laughs might be sporadic but you’re never left looking at your watch.
By the time the story winds up you feel like you know a lot more about this comedian and the difficulties she has faced recently, as well as a few things you really don’t want to know about a Turkish man with a fast motorbike. It all adds up to a show which doesn’t make a huge impact but is certainly a diverting way to spend some time in the late afternoon.