Lucy Porter: Consequences

It's hard to imagine a more ingratiating start to a show than Lucy Porter wheeling on a trolley to serve the audience glasses of sherry – or Red Bull for the under-40s. It sets the perfect tone for an hour of superb standup, by turns richly eloquent, delightfully silly and unpretentiously intelligent. 

Porter's starting point is an imaginary letter to her 16 year-old self, which she recently wrote for a magazine. This sets her thinking about the changes she's since seen in herself and wider society. She's afraid of letting down her younger self by becoming less politically radical and more lazily middle class, but the very fact she's questioning those things suggests the opposite.

Between transgender rights, freedom of speech and Scottish politics, she charts the last 20 years with gentle ease. It never feels academic, but the breadth of ideas is impressive. Her comic strengths include an infectious zeal for wordplay—“old people love puns”, she says, now counting herself among their ranks—and effortless storytelling. From a lengthy confrontation with a sexist Australian sheep-shearer to a bizarre series of events involving an Ashes to Ashes-era David Bowie clown costume, she takes us through a series of hysterically unexpected twist and turns – and we're happy to follow.

Really, Consequences is a show about growing old(er) and still being willing to change your mind about the world. In its way, that's a pretty radical idea, and should appeal to as many 16 year-olds as it does the over-40s.