Catherine Bohart talks quicker than ever. And she is funnier than ever, too, in her new show at Soho Theatre. Her father, a Catholic deacon back in Ireland, tells her that she shouldn’t worry about things as much as she does, that she shouldn’t ‘borrow trouble’ unnecessarily. But it’s hard for Bohart to heed his advice. A Catholic upbringing and an OCD diagnosis mean that she’s borrowing trouble all the time.
Her first example of needless anxiety is perhaps the funniest, as it seems a very English embarrassment. Thinking that her friend Carol believes that Bohart supposes her name to be Karen is something that would keep the very best of us awake in the middle of the night as we sieve through our humiliations instead of counting sheep.
However, the other ‘troubles’ Bohart discusses in her show are more idiosyncratic. She’s just bought a house with her girlfriend, and she riffs on the fact that the Irish are obsessed with homeownership. Three lesbians live next door to her in a fashionable throuple, but Bohart’s mother is more concerned with how they arranged the mortgage. There’s also a funny story that involves four lesbians trying to take off the plastic covering on a new wide-screen TV. Bohart’s girlfriend, despite her short hair, is disappointingly no good at DIY.
Stories rapidly accumulate – lesbian weddings (she doesn’t understand why queer people have become so straight), sperm donors (reassuringly expensive) and online therapy sessions (“sorry, Catherine, we’ve reached the end of our time”) – and yet Bohart’s set doesn’t feel random at all. There’s no overarching narrative, but everything hangs together nevertheless.
As she is now a stalwart on Radio 4 panel shows, her material at Soho Theatre is edgier than we might expect. She accuses Catholics in the audience of being brainwashed, and says she has no time for audience members who wait for her after the show to confide in her their own symptoms of OCD. But Bohart is so cheery, so approachable, that we know she doesn’t really mean it. The Soho crowd understands that Bohart is telling jokes, and the punchlines are received with roars.
Borrowing Trouble sees Bohart at the top of her game. Her previous shows, such as This Isn’t For You in 2022, were a little too predictable, but four years later she appears to have found her niche. And like her new home, she owns it.
Runs until 3 October 2026
