Back in 2020 Irish comedian Grace Mulvey won the inaugural BBC Galton and Simpson Bursary for Comedy Writing. I presume there wasn’t a BBC Galton and Simpson Bursary for Comedy Talking or she would probably have won that too. Mulvey certainly has the gift of the gab. And also the gift of the gag.
Her debut show Tall Baby is a bit of a belated origin story and boy does it cram a lot of origin in. Mulvey explains at the outset how she moved to London a couple of years ago when she was 33 and started her life all over again, setting out to live her dream. Not that everything is perfect, of course, she is still single, but she is finally doing comedy, the thing she wanted to do all of her life.
Mulvey has plenty to say and is so entertaining that you hang on every word, confident in the knowledge that there will be a laugh when it comes to the pay-off, whether talking about rent-paying rotten jobs she has had, her flat being burgled but nothing taken, or her parents turning 60 and suddenly becoming hapless overnight.
It’s pretty universal humour from a female perspective, such as her portrait of bottomless brunches with women getting stuck into the Prosecco and maybe one poached egg. She has a great economical way with language, drawing beautiful little sketches of each archetype around the table.
Men get their fair share of mockery too alongside some self-deprecation about the cost of her high maintenance haircut. With her shiny black bob there’s more than a hint of Dawn French there. She has the vivacity for French as well, never holding back when pouring forth is an option.
It’s traditional comedy, which covers a lot of familiar bases, from sex to Catholicism, but Mulvey’s natural flair for storytelling brings something fresh to the party each time. This is the kind of stand-up that offers everyone in the room an hour of guaranteed floor-to-ceiling laughs.
If it is not necessarily deep Mulvey is clearly well aware of this, rattling through her obligatory traumas 40 minutes in just to get them out of the way. You can see that she could easily do another show that is more serious, about her eating disorders or her father’s early diagnosis of dementia for example, but as an intro to amazing Grace this is a grand place to start.
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Until August 25. Buy tickets here.
Picture credit: Ruth Mejber
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