Lucy Porter: Northern Soul

Actress, writer and comedian Lucy Porter's utterly engaging manner in front of an audience goes hand in hand with brilliantly put-together material. As she tackles the North/South divide (of England, that is) in her latest show, she's never at a loss for words, banters effortlessly with the crowd and caps nuggets from her life with great punchlines.

Porter covers a lot of ground as she explains her lifelong affinity with all things Northern – starting in culturally cold-shouldered Croydon as a Morrissey-obsessed teenager before hitting the mean streets of Manchester, first as a bright-eyed uni student and then working at Granada Television with "Operation Yewtree's wishlist."

Her set revolves around acutely funny observations that emerge naturally from family anecdotes and casual asides rather than fired rat-a-tat from a gag gun. Her father's issues with his Northern Irish background provide an opportunity for a chat about sectarianism and identity, pinned to his attempts at the most rubbish Scottish accent ever.

She wears her politics lightly, but not trivially: feminism and discovering Marxism in the 80s are building blocks of her set alongside her grumpy husband and her blond, blue-eyed children, whose Spanish nanny the brunette Porter admits to role-playing. Reflections on getting older and working out where you belong are rarely this entertaining.

Porter jokes that reviewers always call her "deceptively clever," but there's nothing deceptive here. This is a witty, thoughtful show delivered with winning ease and bucketloads of charm.