‘You’re a funny crowd tonight aren’t you? For the first ten minutes I was sure this gig had bombed’. For a comic with straight observational material Sarah Kendall is admirably good at channelling hostility and tension to give her jokes that extra bit of bite. The best sections of the hour are when this simmering ire comes to the fore - such as a great routine about sexist casting agents and a rewrite of a bedtime story for a beauty-obsessed age which closes the show. However, the majority of the show doesn’t ascend to these promising heights and the show fluctuates between tame material delivered angrily and moments where ideas connect with her confrontational, beguiling style.
The show is loosely structured on the idea of standing up for something, based on Kendall’s experiences of seeing the potential messages in popular culture that could be affecting her daughter. What could be more thought provoking is, for the opening section of the show, an excuse to go into some fairly well-trodden routines about parenthood. A routine about the possibility of hitting children seems to be targeted to try and shock more than it actually does, as well as a topic recently covered in dazzling style by Louis C.K. with far more invention and daring. Elsewhere, we find her talking about youtube videos in a way that seems a bit misdirected and uncertain.
She is at her funniest when she is properly angry - something difficult to sustain for the length of an hour, but something she is clearly capable of. Whether deconstructing the misogynist connotations of Pitbull video or explaining in a bemused tone a suggestive comment surrounding the purchasing of a banana in a fruit shop, she is capable of a great type of put-upon, baffled anger. If only it was spread out across this uneven hour.
