If life begins at 40, where does that leave the decades already under your belt? Rachel Parris fashions a loose theme for her musical-comedy show Poise out of that landmark birthday – not in preparation for a life about to begin, but in reflection of one already well-lived. Particularly in the last few years, when – by Parris’s account – she finally usurped Nish Kumar as host of The Mash Report, and inherited a suite of domestic roles (wife, mother, stepmother, wise old sage) in which she’d never hitherto imagined herself.
Comedy that mines the surprise at finding oneself middle-aged is not in itself surprising: it’s a familiar standup pose. This might play into the first impression of Parris’s act: it’s elegant and accomplished but a bit middle of the road. Even her satirical jokes (“I know most of you are here to hear me slag off the Tories …”) often restate conclusions we’ve already reached, be that Keir Starmer’s thinness on policy or Liz Truss’s rank incompetence.
But Parris mostly transcends all that, for two reasons. One is that the sometimes familiar material is often pared to a sharp point; Parris’s career-long trick is to smuggle acerbic humour under a veneer of charming self-deprecation. The other is that she does so to music – and its half-dozen piano and a cappella numbers are among Poise’s highlights. Her song about traffic tailbacks at Dover is pleasingly capacious, following its own musical logic via nursery rhymes and Les Mis, and making its satirical point largely by omission – because heaven forfend we blame border chaos on you-know-what.
Her Liz Truss number beautifully illustrates the musical-comedy dividend, whereby familiar observations (the Queen died after meeting Truss) can find their funniness multiplied by judicious placement in song. The non-musical sections aren’t as consistently successful, but have their moments, like Parris’s droll effort to be even-handed about Rishi Sunak, or her set-piece about the child development assessment she attended (and upstaged) with her toddler son. Here as elsewhere, the angry/unhinged neurotic peeks out from beneath Parris’s polished carapace, and ratchets up the funny.
