THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith, London W6 9QH until December 8, 2023
There are benefits to me being an American abroad, one of them being that I am so out of touch with the intercultural references and figures of my native land that I get to enjoy them for the first time after everyone else knows about them. I get to experience shows like Hamilton and comedians like Alex Edelman and Mike Birbiglia, already famous in the States and yes, in certain circles here too, but I come without expectation.
So it is with the case of the Iliza Shlesinger, a comedian of whom, had Bill Hicks lived into his 60s, he would be insanely jealous.
For in her new show Hard Feelings, she is the logical conclusion of Hicks' incisive comedy style ramped up to 100, merrily slicing through sacred cows of 21st century culture and moving in a centrifugal force up in waves to each new rant against a custom in life or a set of assumptions we've come to accept, all the time lacing witty observations with equally witty discourse that takes Gatling gun-powered aim at systemic societal prejudices and injustices that lead to the twisted world and way we live.
Bill Maher used to say of the '90s round table talking show that he hosted, Politically Incorrect, that he ate sacred cows for breakfast. Shlesinger's comedy is fed on similar fare. She takes aim at everything from the bro code men use to congratulate each other on impregnating their partners and wives, to the illusions women and men perpetuate about the false standards of the consumer-fed beauty industry that help to maintain the unrealistic expectations to which women hold themselves accountable, to the insular and heedless way in which Gen Z take life for granted in their 'vape hives'. She is a force of nature on stage, careening from an anecdote taking place in a strip club to imaginary ones involving the different ways men and women react to the sight of a cute bunny.
Shlesinger is fiendishly good at knowing her audience, being very self referential in her proclaimed obstinate unwillingness to translate from American – which, thanks to TV and streaming culture, everyone over here knows all too well anyway – to the just-enough research she's done to make disparaging comments about Tesco and Swindon.
Hard Feelings has us splitting our seams in righteous laughter, making full use of the play theory of humor so current in comedy discourse, the one that has us laughing along with comedians at ourselves and at society, not at someone else aside from us. At the same time this is thought provoking observational humor that undermines the typical discourse that is expected of female comedians, the one that says they must also talk about weight and the intelligence of women and the idiocy of men. It is comedy at its high octane finest and with another date to go in London (also at the Apollo, December 8), not to be missed.
