An instinctively dark, perverse and bitingly edgy writer, by her own admission and the routinely offered assessment of her mother, Jena Friedman is not the most polished or personable performer. She can bulldoze with her convictions and has a bristling spikiness, segueing abruptly between personal and political routines. Yet while her simmering anger and occasional despair at the erosion of women’s rights and the creeping rise of fascism in America are Motherf*cker‘s backdrop, even directly shaping her travel plans, it’s the raw human feeling and scrambling processing that makes this a compelling hour.
Just at the point that Friedman became pregnant with her first child, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. The comic isn’t the most obviously maternal figure and, initially, deflects from sharing her emotions by satirising raising a son in the toxicity of the Trump era and Jeffrey Epstein fallout, while making deft jabs at the efforts of men in heteronormative parenting. Her relationship with her mother has been complicated, though nothing compared to that of her sister with the plain-speaking woman. Yet that humour shaped Friedman’s. And at her most vulnerable, certainly the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen her on stage recalling it, she needs both her son and parent, the competing complications with both causing her considerable anguish. This show doesn’t feel fully honed yet but when it is it could be something special.
Jena Friedman: Motherf*cker, Monkey Barrel Comedy, until 24 Aug, 4.15pm