Given how often comics joke about getting old – all those grumpy gags about young people and the confusing nature of modern living – it’s surprising how seldom one encounters meaningful consideration of the midlife crisis in standup. Or so I found myself thinking midway through Zoe Lyons’ touring show Bald Ambition. Lyons’ show isn’t perfect: the first half is partly throat-clearing before the main event, and sometimes her depiction of existential drift aged 50 tends towards the sitcom. But there are also vivid jokes and set-pieces here, in an account of hitting the (just past) halfway stage of life that’s distinguished by emotional honesty as well as good humour.
Most of that comes after the interval, when the show is strongest. Act One roams across Covid, an accident Lyons had while skiing, and her supposedly faltering career – which tees up a risky running joke about how little she wants to be here. It culminates with our host becoming the public face of alopecia after losing her hair to stress – prompted, she says, by midlife angst, among other things.
There are effective moments in that first half, as when an Austrian doctor offers to “pop [her shoulder] back in” after that winter sports wipeout. But there’s weaker material too, not redeemed by Lyons’ strenuous corpsing at her own jokes. Act Two is much tighter, as the Brightonian addresses hitting her half-century, undergoing a classic midlife crisis (sports car very much included) and splitting from her wife.
Just as turning 50 finds Lyons experiencing “grief and relief” in equal measures, so too this section is adroitly balanced, between thoughtfulness (on the mental health burden of the “you can do anything” creeds we live by), self-unseriousness (getting trapped in her own parka) and big-hitting routines – such as the one that imagines Lyons as a workshy Elton John, quitting pop music the instant her bank balance allows it. She may overplay the cartoonish detail in a closing set-piece about running from Brighton to London, but it remains an uproarious closer to a show about that midlife moment when you realise you’re running out of road.
