Soup
Smock Alley Theatre
★★★★★
Very few topics are off the table in Alison Spittle’s Soup, a show so-named to display her frankly demented love of the food/drink hybrid.
Beginning with an anecdote about joining a soup-centric WhatsApp group and somehow segueing into her desire to shit in a cat-box, Spittle keeps the audience guessing in a way that is both bawdy and charming, off-the-cuff and practised, modern and classic.
There are many reasons she has grown to become one of the most celebrated working comics in Britain and Ireland today (she says thrice that she “loves being home,” in a way that feels like she means it) but perhaps the most potent is her ability to tell harrowingly graphic stories in a way that feels approachable – such as comparing a vaginal speculum to a “car jack for your puss,” or using the excuse “sorry, I have a boyfriend,” for the times when you don’t want to ride a pervert.
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Fresh from a sell-out Edinburgh Festival Fringe run and being voted one of British Comedy Guide’s best reviewed shows, Spittle tackles topics like spiteful hen parties, the difference between having lice and having worms, and how growing your own strawberries makes you horny in a 60-minute show that feels like 20.
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There are very few comics doing what Spittle does today, and even fewer doing it well. If this review doesn’t get you to consider booking, may I direct you to the laughter tear-stained floor of Smock Alley’s 1662 theatre, where Spittle was last heard screaming “LET HER LEARN,” about a student nurse looking to shadow her coil implant. Miss at your peril.
Continues at Smock Alley Theatre as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Sunday, September 17th
