Jenny Collier: Jen-Hur

"This show doesn't have anything to do with Romans", Jenny Collier warns us. Whilst that's not entirely true, she does manage to cover just about everything else under the sun in a wryly funny hour.

Collier uses the show to lay bare her perceived personal flaws, but thankfully she's secure in her insecurities. She candidly enumerates her vices and gets some laughs in return, but it eventually all unravels to reveal the idea that underpins the whole thing: identity. There's a low-key demeanour to her act that sometimes works against her; she comes off as a little standoffish and doesn't quite gel with the audience.

There's fun to be had with her recurring wordplay gags (including using Latin suffixes for all plurals, apparently so that we don't notice her lisp), and her waspish edge gives the material a bit of sting. She has a tendency to pause too long after punchlines in an attempt to salvage jokes that don't land, though, and it disrupts her natural rhythm. It's a top-heavy show too; outwith the literal energy expended in her Ben-Hur reenactment, it feels like she runs out of steam towards the end. 

It's enjoyably bitter nonetheless, and she rarely misses her mark when it comes to squeezing the most out of a skit. Come for the titular pun, stay (and more or less be satisfied with your decison) for the completely unrelated material.