Was any standup show more keenly anticipated than Rose Matafeo’s follow-up to her award-winning 2018 set Horndog? You can forgive the delay: the New Zealander has been establishing herself in the hearts of millions since, with her hit TV romcom Starstruck. She’s been busy with affairs of her own heart, too. On and On and On is a pretty stark interrogation of Matafeo’s love life – more star-crossed than starstruck, or doomed by the 32-year-old’s suite of domineering neuroses. Which, if disastrous for her relationships, are a gift to her comedy.
No need to worry that TV success might have blunted Matafeo’s standup: this set feels closer to the bleeding edge than anything she’s done before. And just as funny. Its keynotes are candour, an unforgiving intelligence, and a refusal to be glib about anything. Her voice feels compulsive, as if she might talk, explain, rationalise her way out of the emotional labyrinth. We’re on Jessie Cave’s oversharing terrain, as Matafeo spills the contents of a 16,000-word journal she kept on her smartphone’s notes app, recalls her lonely 20s in London (and all those misjudged relationships with posh men), then addresses the fallout from a more recent breakup.
Brought up to date, the show lands ever sharper punches, as Matafeo confronts the indignity of being dumped, not for being an unformed twentysomething but for being who you truly are. A droll analogy is deployed to reconcile her to her heterosexuality, and – as she weighs the pros and cons of motherhood – a fine gag tests the limits of her audience’s feminism.
None of this is delivered with lofty or retrospective detachment: Matafeo is still in it, still hounding online relationship coaches for answers, still burning with shame at the compromises she makes for love. That gives the show a hell of an immediacy, culminating in a brilliant joke at the audience’s expense, and a bleak withholding of any kind of happy ending. Perhaps Matafeo’s fatalism about love situates On and On and On at the tragic end of comedy’s scale – but its smarts, self-mocking humour and striking perspectives make it wonderfully invigorating for audiences.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August. Then at Arcola theatre, London, 30 September-19 October.
