Maisie Adam has enjoyed a rapid ascent in stand-up, transitioning from the circuit to touring and television at breakneck speed. She also has a Netflix debut in the offing, albeit after a fashion, which she discloses with typically self-effacing good humour. So it’s perhaps understandable that she’s seeking to pause now and take stock, not least as she’s also recently got married and hit the milestone age of 30.
Outside forces are pressuring her to have a child. Yet she’s just starting to be a parent to her parents, with their late middle-age eccentricities increasingly revealing themselves.
She characterises her friends as essentially leading double lives, arrested adolescents who’ve had wild nights but now boast serious job titles. Yet for her, as an anecdotal comic, the personal and professional are inextricable, something she makes explicit in Appraisal, a coming-of-age show with a catch-all theme of self-assessment.
As her opening half of crowd work really demonstrates, Adam projects an engaging, approachable relatability. No story, be it her gigging internationally, getting hitched, settling in middle-class Brighton or popping up on shiny floor Saturday night television, is presented as an accomplishment.
Rather, they’re framed as cautionary tales of times when she was profoundly embarrassed, inevitably ending with her chiding herself for being a “dickhead” or some such. Despite being a sympathetic bride confidant and battle-hardened authority on the pitfalls of a hen do, she totally revealed her naivety with her own.
While she’s animated and conversational throughout, the show threatens a bleaker turn towards the end, as Adam reflects on the dangers for female comics working at night. A bit of grit amidst the cheery dismissiveness that she’s applied to topics such as biological clocks and rank snobbery, it is also a setup for a delightful celebrity cameo that summarises all the disparate routines to this point, effectively manufacturing a sense of structure across the show. Adam may be moving in increasingly rarefied circles but you never forget that it’s her piss-taking, girl-next-door vibe that helped get her there.
Her observations tend to pleasingly chime rather than startle with originality. However, as she ponders society’s propensity to celebrate babies’ weight, the escalating profusion of middle names and older people’s baffling relationship with technology, she often elevates these routines with an unexpected simile or choice cultural reference, dragging Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 back from the recesses of nostalgia.
She’s forever puncturing any hint of pretentiousness, with a degree of tenderness towards her pseudy, wellness-obsessed or new homeowner friends, but with considerably less respect for the affronted audience member who demanded she respect the boundaries between Brighton and Hove.
Now firmly established as a touring draw, Adam has all the easy charm, charisma and performance skills to make the leap to grander venues and doubtless her own television vehicle, though it’d be great if she could gild some of her everywoman appeal with more distinctive and sharper-edged observational material.
Touring until 6 March 2025 | Image: Contributed
The Reviews Hub Score
Self-effacing taking stock
