When Frankie McNair started taking comedy seriously, they tell us, it got boring – so boring they almost quit. Only when the Canberra native rediscovered silly – specifically, with a Harry Hill-alike bit about a “long fork lady” – did they plug back into their love for the artform, and win the best newcomer gong at the Melbourne comedy festival to boot. That show, Relax Your Knees, now arrives in London, advertising the Aussie as a captivating new talent, albeit one whose material isn’t always as sparkling as their personality.
There’s a lot of housekeeping before McNair gets down to business, much announcing of how crazy they’re going to be – and sometimes I felt this over-articulating of their zaniness could be dialled down. The moments when they show rather than tell – a dotty sequence involving a banana to the eyes, say – are often the most effective. A recurring swerve into the character of a Liza Minnelli-alike cabaret raconteuse works well partly because McNair makes no attempt to contextualise or justify it whatsoever.
These sequences, fuelled by our host’s livewire, high-strung charisma, are spliced with autobiographical standup sections, in which McNair addresses their gender fluidity, dating woes and brittle mental health. With flashing eyes and extreme switchbacks of vocal register, McNair makes sure that, even when this material feels familiar (when they start talking about their shower head, we all know where the routine is heading) it’s never less than lively.
That pertness buys McNair our forbearance for the insubstantiality of Relax Your Knees, to which they are the first to admit. (“What does it all mean? I don’t know …”) The joke when McNair plays a variety of different types of auntie – and it’s a joke generously shared with the audience – is precisely that it’s a bit tenuous and crap. That trick is subject to diminishing returns, mind you: the recurring whoopee cushion gag tests even this fond audience’s indulgence to near-destruction. And yet, we indulge, because McNair is great company, with personality to burn and usually something funny around the next corner – or the one after that.
At Soho theatre, London, until 11 January
