Halley Metcalfe: Five Stars
Live Review

Dangerous title. With it, Halley Metcalfe is giving an open invitation to reviewers to expose the shortfall between her show and that elusive perfect score – and there is quite a gulf to aim at.

This, her third festival show, is all about being reviewed. Not by critics, per se, but by your peers and by authority figures, right back from primary school report cards. It’s about seeking validation, and about wanting to fit in to a group.

Or, to put it another way, it’s another of those ‘I was quite the nerd at school; here are some of the embarrassing incidents that involved’ shows. So we have her awkward teenage poetry, the humiliation of being caught lying during ‘show and tell’ in a misguided attempt to appeal cool and tales of how her twisted parents made her turn out the way she has. Which, in truth, is hardly weird at all.

They’re all decent coffee-shop anecdotes, and Metcalfe’s background in both drama and teaching has given her the presence and poise to tell them well, but they lack the punch that would elevate them into compelling stand-up. The reviewer’s quote she chose to advertise her show with bills it as ‘light comedy’, and light it most certainly is.

At 24, seeking acceptance still seems part and parcel of her life, and she doesn’t want to do anything that might make the audience dislike her, which does result in blandness in the material. In the most revealing moment, she mentions in passing that her mother once shot someone, and that her grandmother ran a brothel. Do we get these tales? No, we hear how she conducts off-syllabus dance-offs in her drama classes, just so she can show off her moves.

The reason she doesn’t mention those family tales in any more depth, she says, tellingly, is that her relatives don’t want her to. Great, a compliant comic who does exactly what her parents want. Somehow I can’t see Richard Pryor, to mention just another offspring of a brothelkeeper, having been too concerned about that. Metcalfe even uses the word ‘fouff’ in place of ‘fuck’ for fear of offending her mum. Really, grow some motherfouffing balls…

That’s harsh. This is an amiable show, and Metcalfe a personable performer who knows the mechanics of storytelling and is able hold the attention even when the material is slight. But slight the material certainly is.