The Counting House
Aug 18-24 (16:15)
Nulla Dies Sine Linea
‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ as post-disaster life advice is all fine and well provided you have at least a little sugar to sprinkle in with all that tart juice, otherwise all you’re left with is a glass of wince inducing liquid which’ll have your guests puckering their faces and nodding and smiling in fake approval. Thankfully, our purveyor of ‘Ellenade’ bounces onto the stage to welcome us, looking like a ‘primary teacher, ‘aged child actress’, or indeed a very English reincarnation of Kristen Bell from The Good Place. It’s a boon to her show that she carries this air of lightness around her, as her pre-mid life crisis material themes around a ‘big break up’ serial killers, creepy men with vans, pervy ticket conductors and a particularly neat little punchline about Hitlers favourite place in England.
The self-deprecation woven into every anecdote prevents this slice of post-break up London life straying into bitter faux-misandry. Indeed, she spends the first 10 minutes of her set discussing the meticulously planned ‘break up date’ of herself and her partner of 5yrs, complete with matching innapropriate, literal, parting gifts. This kind of whimsy keeps full blown misanthropy at bay, and allowed the audience to relax into 45 minutes of easy charm and chat, bantering delivered at a whipsmart pace we discover is an unexpected benefit of 5yrs of unsuccessful anxiety therapy.
The mid-afternoon crowd are lulled into false senses of security for brief spells, though there’s always a luridly technicolor sexual metaphor waiting to jolt them back into the chaos of Ellen’s love life. I’ll let you use your imagination to decipher what the phrase ‘taste the rainbow’.was deployed to represent.
It’s a polished act, even if the ground is well worn, as Sasha herself points out, she spent the last 5yrs as a stand up in a long term relationship, mocking the unfortunate fellow performers who used dating app anecdotes as the backbone for their sets. Ellen’s self-disclosed anxiety results in nice rapid fire delivery which moves the show along at pace, and keeps the groups of clearly newly ‘singled’ friends laughing away in recognition of the travails of a modern online singleton.
Ultimately though the show concludes on a cliffhanger choice which Eddie Izzard would no doubt appreciate, ‘pizza or death’. Sasha Ellen is of course alive to tell the tale, which thankfully means that she got to have her pizza, and eat it too.
Ewan Law
Mumble Comedy 