Sam Jay @ The Stand, Edinburgh
US superstar stand-up Sam Jay proves she's an unorthodox contrarian of a comic
A certain fearlessness has always been central to Sam Jay's approach – and that fearlessness is very much in evidence tonight. There's an unapologetic glorying in American excess: conspicuous consumption, XXL portions, anaesthetised convenience. Jay’s love of indulgence goes against the grain of the prescribed self-restraint that’s part of the liberal mindset, and her larger contrarian instincts are similarly at odds with progressive orthodoxy.
She loves her fiancée but she also loves cheating (the key is to not fuck local), and as the breadwinner in their relationship, she sympathises with the pressures on men to be uncomplaining providers. Jay notices the differences between how men and women socialise: women warmed by the support and sympathy of their friends, men given the cold shoulder if they transgress the requirement to be low-key. This is material which makes us see that, for all the opening-up of the conversation around gender, there's been no fundamental change in the expectations around masculinity.
This freethinking characterises Jay's whole set: there's some sympathy for Trump and the January 6th insurrectionists, edgy riffs on slavery, and a major diss of French cooking. But for all the unleashed effect of the material, there’s a subtly measured quality to Jay’s approach: porn’s great, but only on a phone – any bigger and you can see the sadness of the female performers. Likewise, yes, she’s sympathetic to men, but there’s a critical edge in her focus on all the rape (P Diddy, R Kelly, Weinstein, Nickelodeon... the whole of the 90s essentially).
The material undoubtedly skirts anti-woke positions, but the intelligence of Jay's material confounds any kneejerk resistance – like Shane Gillis, who occupies similar territory, Sam Jay is operating at a high level of craft and confidence.
Sam Jay: A Proper Club Tour, reviewed at The Stand, Edinburgh, 8 Oct