Suzanne Lea Shepherd: You're Okay!

• Craig Angus
• 13 August 2018

This article is from 2018.

Material lets down capable New Yorker

You're Okay! has a promising premise. Suzanne Lea Shepherd and her Kansas family gather for Thanksgiving, and wind up visiting a strip club. An unlikely scenario, it would be a believable journey if it was written well, but Shepherd gives the impression of a capable actor let down by her script.

The show is defined by a lack of patience. Having set her stall out to follow the aforementioned narrative, Shepherd struggles to build a story, too often going in for lazy punchlines she hasn't earned rather than continuing to paint a picture. Too often the material is juvenile, in particular a bizarre Harry Potter gag doesn't merit the ceremony attached to it.

There are some good bits: she describes the stalking of an ex-boyfriend on Instagram well, and her vision of dating as a pyramid scheme gets the biggest laugh of the show; partly because of her inspired choice of who to put at the top. She successfully mines the politics of being sexually active whilst sharing a room. It's a difficult show but, to her credit, Shepherd is unperturbed. She's an expressive and engaging talker but needs to better figure out what works and what doesn't.

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