Lou Sanders has established her reputation beyond the fringe circuit with appearances on the Late Late Show with James Corden and 8 out of 10 Cats. She can be brilliantly funny, her wit a zingy mixture of self-deprecating confessions and unpredictable one-liners.
The opening of her new show, One Word: Wow, however, takes a while to get off the ground. She has some very funny interactions with audience members who arrive a bit late. But her material about the pandemic – or the Pandy, as she likes to call it – doesn’t quite catch the mood. At Leicester Square Theatre she then introduces her long-term stand-up friend, Luke McQueen, who gives a distinctly nervy performance, making it clear that he’s trying out new material, checking his hand where he has evidently written prompts. His Where’s Wally? sequence is laugh-out-loud funny, but his Names for Breasts really isn’t.
Sanders’ own set revolves around her ambitious attempts not just to roller skate, but to fit in at skate parks – those scary-looking ones where teenagers perform tricks on curved walls and ramps. Alongside some hilarious video footage of her assorted failures, she reads extracts from her Skate Diary. Here embarrassment is constant. ‘Whose ready for the gnarly party?’ she claims to have asked assembled cool youngsters.
But ahead lies another risky venture – romance. Sanders candidly follows the thrills and spills of a new relationship with a fellow skater. Does the age difference matter? ‘They say age is just a number,’ she begins, before deadpanning ‘Try telling that to my nan who died of it’. Sanders is great on deconstructing clichés, the unexpected swoops and curves of her imagination that really get the laughs: ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, you’ll love Twitter!’
It’s impossible not to like Sanders. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is effortlessly funny.
Reviewed on 22 March 2022, then on tour
