Watching Ele McKenzie’s debut hour feels a little bit like being invited into an anatomy theatre for an operation by the patient themselves. In it, McKenzie bears her heart, soul and body (not literally for that last one).
But its thrills somehow don’t feel illicit: McKenzie casts off personal, social and sexual relations like they’re absolutely nothing. After describing a recent break-up which left her heart “absolutely decimated”, eating nothing but ice cream and fully constipated for three weeks she breezily asks where else she could talk with such candour: “if not here, then where?”
But this isn’t a show that’s honest at the expense of the comedy: as she mines ever deeper into the personal, she only gets funnier – evidence of an excellent quality for a debutante: if a gag isn’t funny, it goes nowhere near the show. And in its second half, the show does something more exciting, exchanging radical candour for fanciful imagineering, as McKenzie embarks on a sordid fantasy of congress with Bob Dylan that’s really about connecting with her parents.
Not every moment of either the first-half filth or the second-half absurdity will land for everyone. But it’s thrilling to see a new performer so locked in on what’s funny.
Ele McKenzie: Bringing It All Back Home, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug, 8.10pm