Phoebe Walsh: I'll Have What She's Having

Phoebe Walsh is either so far ahead of the curve that the audience struggles to keep up with her, or else she's simply incapable of adhering to any conventional writing structure. Her show's ostensible focus is on the comic getting to know herself, but the routines which put this theme across are so fractured and rife with non sequiturs that we wonder how confused she must have been before undertaking her self-exploration in earnest.

If her discomfortingly harsh descriptions of her parents are anything to go by, Walsh was bred to be insecure, self-absorbed and eccentric. She loses some of the room when she talks about her family because the sense of humble tragedy she evokes is just too overpowering. When she describes coming out as bisexual to her mother and father, we do at least get a sense of each accepting their daughter, albeit in the most distracted or cringe-inducing of ways.

The performer is at her strongest when she focuses on her own neurosis independent of its possible causes. Sharing chips in restaurants turns out to be one major cause of anxiety for her, while her relationships are characterised by needy tactical negotiation. One very lengthy routine in which Walsh acts out a night spent clubbing with friends is baffling and meanders without any kind of discernible point being made, but otherwise she just about succeeds in putting across a world view which defies comprehension.