Grace Jarvis @ Underbelly George Square

Oh! The Horrors! is something of an exercise in blowing off steam: an hour-long journey into the ills of Grace Jarvis’ life and the world more generally. That’s not to say it’s unpleasant, or gripey – Jarvis is an experienced comedic professional, after all. The topic jumps from chronic pain to climate change to her grandfather’s stint as a prisoner of war, all with a gentle and light-hearted tone, not trying to doommonger or lament. Fittingly for a woman in the midst of her rite-of-passage living abroad years, Jarvis opts instead for general bewilderment with the world.

The hour features bursts of brilliant writing: Jarvis compares the anger of some male comics at her material about stand-up sexual predators with the baselessness of other gender-based stereotypes (“there’s no group chat of male comedians saying ‘don’t get in a car with Fern Brady, she runs red lights’”). Her observational work also has a kind of natural advantage – raised in Australia by a family of Kiwis and now living in a third country, she has the jump on anyone else in noticing and analysing the cultural oddities we normally take for granted.

It’s a shame, then, that Jarvis doesn’t always feel confident in her material. Possibly something has thrown her off her game this evening – she does tell us she was late for the show because on her way over she stopped to help someone who had fallen over. Given how effortlessly this is absorbed into material for the show however, we don’t know whether to believe her. All the same, The Horrors! is charming and amusing; a gentle balm for anyone struggling to deal with the ills of the world.

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Grace Jarvis: Oh! The Horrors!, Underbelly George Square (Wee Coo), until 25 Aug, 5.50pm, £7-£11