Sara Pascoe Vs History

First off, …Vs History is a bit of a misnomer. Sara Pascoe does give nods to Freud, da Vinci and cavemen at various points in this funny and intriguing set. But they’re all there to illuminate musings on female sexuality, Pascoe’s teenagehood and other more personal topics, rather than to provide any grand narrative thread. This might be a case of choosing your show title before you’ve written the set (a common affliction at the Fringe), and Pascoe just about gets away with it with an hour that charms and amuses, without ever quite catching fire.

There’s really nothing to fault in the material here. It’s strong, it’s original, it’s frequently quite bold, and it takes the newly-rekindled feminist voice in standup to interesting places. For example, I had no idea that women make more noise during sex because, prehistorically, they might have wanted to attract more than one lover per session; nor that the clitoris tends to be closer to the vagina in smaller-breasted women, meaning that they experience greater pleasure through intercourse (both facts that delight Pascoe for reasons both personal and political).

This is no po-faced lecture, either: though it doesn’t contain the off-the-wall silliness of Bridget Christie, one might even say that the relentless gag rate in this show exposes that particular stereotype of feminist comedy for the lie it always has been.

Even so, there’s no real build to the theme or the laughs, and Pascoe’s delivery invites us to ponder, engage and guffaw, rather than to collapse in hysterics. As we leave the venue, people (particularly women), talk appreciatively about how interesting the set was. All well and good, but the show retains a slightly underwhelming quality that Pascoe could overcome if she really kicked into fifth gear.