Jen Brister: Now and Then

In spite of her obvious talent Jen Brister, it seems, is wracked by self-doubt. She's worried that we'll judge her as little more than a "beige lesbian in a darkened room"; she's concerned that her age, a whopping 37, makes her appear entirely past it; most significantly for her, she's worried that she might be "a bit of a dickhead." Addressing these concerns, Brister produces a well-constructed, amusingly neurotic hour which, without perhaps giving quite enough away to conclude whether she is indeed a dickhead or not (I suspect not), certainly outs her as anything but beige.

Brister is a thoroughly theatrical performer whose most enjoyable moments come as she takes on exaggerated personas or argues her way through imagined dialogues which, despite being evidently well rehearsed, retain a necessary sense of spontaneity. There's a great deal about her relationship with her mother – a Spanish lady who pronounces her daughter's name "Yennifer", who cooked her four children dishes such as Gallician squid stew rather than the coveted likes of Findus crispy pancakes, and whose "advices" (yup, in the plural) provide some of this hour's most joyous moments (a close second place being her savage impersonation of the white, male, macho comic and their wildman consumption of drugs and women).

Sure, there's nothing especially novel in picking over the bones of youthful immortality and of the dawning sense of one's own advancing years, but Brister's skilled theatrical approach with its unexpected variation in pitch and pace makes this well-trodden ground feel a little less familiar, and a lot more fun.