Catherine Bohart opens by telling us that we're seeing her at the beginning of a long tour – before her energy flags, she says. It's difficult to believe, however, that the Irishwoman ever performs at anything less than full throttle, and so it proves here with Again, With Feelings, a show about where her life is at the moment.
She's 35 and very definitely not where she thought she would be – and certainly not where her parents might have hoped; married, with kids and owning a house. Instead Bohart is unmarried, child-free and her living arrangements... Well she fills us in on those, as she does her latest relationship (with echoes of past failed ones rearing their head).
She's an oversharer, she tells us, as we learn of her anxiety over the age gap between Bohart and her younger “current girlfriend”, as she cheekily calls her, their domestic set-up and her mother's nervous question about any possible grandchildren. The comic expresses disappointment that her partner, hard as she tries, doesn't like gossip as much as she does and frets too about her ability to remain friends with her exes (not a trick Bohart has yet pulled off). As Bohart says: “You have to keep the football team together somehow,” delivered with a wink as she rolls out a lesbian stereotype in the service of a good gag.
The motherhood conundrum leads to the show's strongest section, about the sheer administration needed for a gay couple to conceive. No straight-couple unplanned pregnancies for them, Bohart cheerily chides, as she wonders about sperm banks, a possible role for a man in her life and what she thinks about the offspring of lesbian mothers.
Along the way Bohart talks about love languages, her OCD and the different roles her mum and dad take in their parenting roles – and there's an excellent rimming joke in there too. Like she says, she's an oversharer...
Bohart also does some smart crowd work, even managing to create strong material out of some odd interactions with the front row on the night I was in. Her fast-paced delivery and force of personality means there's never a dull moment.
- Catherine Bohart is at Soho Theatre until 23 March, then touring until 10 October
- More comedy reviews on theartsdesk
