Harriet Kemsley @ Monkey Barrel
Harriet Kemsley takes the raw and potent story of the end of her marriage, and weaves a sparking, surprising and complex hour of comedy
In Everything Always Works Out for Me, Harriet Kemsley juxtaposes her frantic, terminally positive temperament against a raw scrape of narrative – the dissolution of her marriage, and finding herself as a single parent. It’s potent source material that Kemsley handles well, and she feels more rooted, fully realised; her left-field observations traded for something more linear and organic. Her familiar rug-pull punchlines are still delivered – from the weird all the way through to the incredibly blue – but they are prefaced by storytelling that seems sincere, even pointedly emotional in the set’s concluding moments.
This alchemy feels exciting, like all of these ingredients could catalyse and spark, with Kemsley the frenzied mad scientist. Digs at her fellow comedian ex-husband are above the belt (just), her recollection of her time on her Celebrity Mastermind specialist subject is typically Kemsley and very funny, but the set lacks jokes that outright sizzle.
Kemsley’s reveal of her involvement (under alias) in Rebecca Humphries’ Why Did You Stay? proves genuinely fascinating, affirmed by the crowd’s sharp intake of breath; it's edge-of-your-seat gossip. It is a set highlight not only because of this, but because of its envelopment in other aspects of the show that creates a set high point midway through.
Kemsley is fricative; a tense, vibrating presence whose crude and unflinching humour is – as it always has been with her – a landslide of punchlines and stupidity. The controlled chaos of Kemsley arguing with herself over things she has already said, lapping intended humour with the accidental, is expertly done.
As part of her intensely personal narrative, her humour appears more complex, and her audience more involved. While the set proper may not ignite the roars Kemsley has invoked in years previous, Everything Always Works Out for Me is nuanced and honed in such a way that incurs a sense of development from Kemsley, personally and professionally.
Harriet Kemsley: Everything Always Works Out For Me, run ended. Touring the UK, including Heart of Hawick, Hawick, 11 Oct; Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 12 Oct; The Stand, Glasgow, 13 Oct