Not your typical break-up comedy
Erika Ehler knows about break-ups – from the turmoil of dating apps and why they should list your chosen fetishes up front, to a heartbreak of a different kind, induced by phone messages.
The latter heartbreak is that of the platonic kind, and in this show, she tries to convey the loneliness that can be found by women in their mid-twenties, in the driest of deliveries. It should be said up front, that tonight’s small audience was not her typical crowd – established to be millennials and older, and seeing her for the first time at 6pm on a Tuesday. If I were to see her on a busier night with more of her contemporaries in, it may have lifted the atmosphere somewhat.
Still hurting from her break-up with friends she met during her international study at Salford, she quips that the key points of attraction were proximity and having a car. Which is a fair enough reason to make friends when you’re at university, but she doesn’t really give us a ‘why’ she kept the friendship up for longer than it deserved.
Through the show, in addition to the break-up, we cover using cultural touch-points for assessing age-appropriateness of sexual encounters (and the surprising level of proof provided from some quarters); what it means when girls cut their own hair; a lethal cocktail recipe; how her parents keep the spark alive, planning a very Gen-Z funeral and the difference between Canadian and American school lockdown drills.
This is all delivered with a caustic side-eye, but it felt a bit shallow in places, especially as she appears to be still processing the loss of her friends. She came alive and showed more heart towards the end, unintentionally when she stumbled over her bucket speech, and she gave a genuine laugh. A crack in the edgy comedian armour appeared, and a more human Erika appeared. Likewise with the softness she spoke about her best friend Jacqueline, who supports her and she can rely on, no matter where she is in the world, and how that’s the sort of person she needs in her life. This introspection comes a bit too late in the show, but it would be interesting to see her explore this side a bit more to add a bit more balance to the show.
There were some really well thought-out touches here, and ending with a mash-up of Wonderwall and F.E.A.R was a masterstroke. Hopefully she’ll have more receptive crowds on other evenings, as there’s some well crafted jokes and callbacks in here that deserved greater recognition than they did.