Maia Tassalini @ Pleasance Courtyard

Since she was 13, Maia Tassalini has been obsessed with Monica Lewinsky. Obsessed enough, she says, to have sent several emails and invites to her show. There’s a shrine. Why? Because at 13 she was told she looked like Lewinsky, and since then has become only more convinced of Lewinsky’s status as a modern icon and a diva: “She had five minutes and a thong and she almost took down the government”.

Tassalini’s relationship with Lewinsky becomes a linchpin in the show for the show's major themes: body image, celebrities and pop culture as stand-ins for parental figures, the tension between a love of “garish, gaudy glamour” and the desire to be “proper”. She’ll also circle back often to a sometimes difficult youth: “There are people with happy childhoods, and there are people who are funny and interesting.”

If that sounds a bit heady, the show is anything but, with games (including a best-dressed competition) and enough set pieces to keep it clipping along at pace. Not all of those set pieces will land, including a perhaps over-telegraphed finale that deflates the show more than intended. But Tassalini finds her sweet spot when mixing in frequent audience interaction, deployed with the skill of the plate-spinner. 

It’s a tightly packed hour, blessed with Tassalini’s rapid, gossipy, and illicit delivery: the feeling she creates is, perhaps, something like a late-night chat at a sleepover. For a debut, this amounts to a presentation that’s remarkably assured, though seasoned comedy-goers may see enough notes of other performers – John Tothill, Amy Annette, Lou Sanders – to wonder whether a more fully distinctive persona may emerge in what will be a much-anticipated second hour.

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Maia Tassalini: I Was 22 and Stunning, Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Three), until 30 Aug, 6pm, £12.50-£14.50