Adrienne Truscott’s A One-Trick Pony

• Laura Ennor
• 9 August 2015

This article is from 2015.

credit: Allison Orenstein

A disappointingly incoherent hour with false starts and worthy targets

As the self-declared pre-eminent ‘gimmicky no-pants rape lady’, Adrienne Truscott is still taking down rape jokes and rape culture, as well as gleefully making men in the front row uncomfortable with her lack of underwear. But for all she’s playing up to her role as stand-up ingénue (most of her experience is as a dancer and cabaret artist), she really does seem genuinely nervous around the stand-up bit of the act (the nudity, not so much).

Praised for being excitingly confrontational in her 2013 solo debut, Asking for It, here she is hesitant, seeking reassurance that the audience has got the references. The first half is lost to a couple of momentum-killing false starts, but the second is stronger and the finale uproarious, though largely wordless. It all makes for an incoherent whole.

The range of Truscott’s targets has widened to include ‘ironic racism’, Donald Trump and the internet trolls who have seen fit to critique her genitalia. But while those are all worthy targets for a skewering, what they get is more of a vague prodding. It’s not that this show doesn’t have substance, or that it isn’t at times very funny, but more that the substance and the funny don’t meet up as often as they should.

Gilded Balloon, 622 6552, until 17 Aug, 8.15pm, £12 (£10).