Stevie Martin @ Monkey Barrel
Stevie Martin's new show clout is teeming with ideas and loaded with jokes, but (whisper it) are lols alone enough?
Successful online comic (45 million views worldwide and counting) Stevie Martin makes a return to live comedy with this new show. She's been feeling the limitations of online laughter – 'hahahahaha' gives only scant satisfaction – and now she's after the dopamine hit of a live response.
Martin is not interested in confessional material, adamant her life isn't interesting enough. Her asperity is a refreshing change given all the sharing does sometimes feel a bit... sticky. In fact, there are lots of contemporary comic tendencies Martin's not interested in, and she gleefully undercuts many of them here. The show as a whole is a resounding affirmative to a notorious Guardian headline from two years ago – 'can a comedy show get by on laughs alone?' – with lols alone very much the focus. She may touch on 'big' subjects like surveillance, gender and class (the fish finger joke is a beauty), but they are purely the means to an end. Any suggestion of a 'message' or a meaningful subtext is immediately dispelled.
She digs into other comic strategies, too: satirising the pumping music used to energise a room with screenshots showing YouTube playlists as the audience enters: 'playlists to make the audience think I'm cool', 'playlists to make the audience think I'm cool and also compelling'. Seemingly straight-up observational material quickly devolves into the ridiculous, while the convention of the big reveal or the closing twist is undercut with The Lion King as the absurdly arbitrary key to all meaning.
It's undoubtedly very funny and Martin is teeming with ideas, but when she mentions that we've hit joke saturation point, we feel the truth of it, slightly stunned under the relentless barrage. Whisper it, but perhaps it's true that laughs alone aren't quite enough.
Stevie Martin: clout, Monkey Barrel (MB4), until 25 Aug, 3.35pm, £10-12