I'm Doing This for You

Haley McGee’s throwing a surprise show: a stage for the man she loves to be the comedian he craves. We’re his audience, primed to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ when he finally arrives, to laugh with abandon and cheer to the rafters. We’re gonna love him, she insists.

Self-contained, but sharp as hell, I’m Doing This for You entangles a feminist retort with a critique of performance. While we wait, she gabbles. All this is for him – even if he treated her like shit. He’s hysterical. To prove it, she does some of his stuff – his ‘my girlfriend’ routines, his ‘women, eh’ jokes, his rape gags. See?

A cross between Betty Friedan’s fifties housewife and Sex in the City’s Samantha, McGee’s a subservient mess. Pills fly out of her handbag and she smiles like she’s bracing for impact. Everything’s for him: the self-improvement, the sex, the hurt. All of this.

Performance often protests that it’s all for our benefit: the audience comes first. McGee busts that apart, barking orders at us (“Be your best selves”) and invoking the brittle egos hiding behind ‘generosity’ and ‘vulnerability’.

At the same time, it’s an act of self-sacrifice. By taking on his misogynist routines, skipping their worst degradations, she’s saving us from them. She does so with a sideswipe: we enjoy that shit, we’re complicit. Those jokes? They’re for us.

Manic and angry, off-kilter and wry, this is a smart assault on the patriarchy and performance.