We’ve become so used to Bridget Christie taking on big themes – sexism and the menopause among them – that a show more akin to observational comedy comes as a bit of surprise. Then again, while her friends, dating and the woes of parenting form the solid base of Jacket Potato Pizza, she layers it with some politics too.
It’s political comedy – nicely laden with sarcasm – that Christie starts with as she talks about Melania Trump. Does she have no friends, the comic asks, performing a conversation between the First Lady and an imaginary pal, questioning Melania’s life choices.
Female friendship is at the core of the show and Christie’s mate Janet plays a prominent role as Christie recounts a convoluted tale about going to a gig that Janet once tried to impart, much impeded by her menopause-affected brain. She forgets crucial words and confuses names, so Janet is outraged by Benjamin Zephaniah’s actions in Gaza… But then, Christie herself confuses The Rock and The Edge, so it’s catching.
Christie tells us she now cares little for what anyone thinks of her – middle age can do that to women – and how happy she is to be free of the effects of oestrogen, recalling her behaviour when she was younger. (It was from her youthful dating days that the show’s corking title comes from.)
The show is seemingly structured like one of Janet’s meandering tales as Christie careers from the meanness of teenage girls and dental fetishes to farts at bus stops and the venality of Donald Trump seemingly at random. But in reality, it’s tightly constructed.
Some sections of the show land better than others – there’s a brilliant feminist takedown of Jack Thorne’s Adolescence, for instance, but a rather less brilliant one of The Celebrity Traitors, which feels shoehorned in – and, although this a very physical performance, with Christie running around the stage and acting out some sections, the show dips in pace towards the end.
Christie neatly ties up all the show’s strands and, even though it fades out rather than ends with a bang, it provides a lot of laughs.
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