Jessica Fostekew @ Monkey Barrel

Jessica Fostekew’s new show Wench is deeply interested in identity, but there’s nuance in her celebration of queerness, and understanding of those who struggle to keep up with the new vocabulary around gender and identity. For all the hilarity of her big talk (she can’t do the small variety), there’s the sense that for her, standup serves an important social need: that her over-sharing is in the service of community and mutual understanding.

She’s willing to be patient but make no mistake, Fostekew is quick to call-out those crass enough to ask for intimate details, and she spins out a very funny fantasy of what queer sex might look like using the half-arsed preconceptions of her inquisitors. Although, as a relatively late arrival to a queer identity, she’s self-deprecating about her own fury at homophobia, the wrath is still very real.

The feminist implications of her commitment to openness feel really significant: the chat about pubic hair, the material about plastic surgery – it’s both funny and necessary. Femininity is not getting any easier, and talking about shifting expectations and norms is important. Suffering in silence is perhaps a generational thing, and she commends younger women for their casual disregard of coercive conventions (that, and their happy lack of inhibitions about noisy public peeing).

These issues are brought vividly to life through Fostekew’s astonishingly mobile and precise expressions, which provide moments of exquisite physical comedy – her expressions dramatising the dwindling empowerment quota of getting waxed is just one instance of her comic versatility. The show never flags, propelled by the sheer speed and energy of her delivery.

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Jessica Fostekew: Wench, Monkey Barrel (Monkey Barrel 1), until 28 Aug, 4.45pm, £8-9