Jena Friedman: Motherf*cker review – political zingers and all-too-raw grief

Monkey Barrel at The Hive, EdinburghThe standup follows a first half of in-your-face jokes about American democracy with a palpably painful account of the loss of her motherStandup shows about losing a parent – “dead dad shows”, they get called – have become a genre unto themselves in recent times, and nowadays tend to arrive couched in self-awareness and alertness to cliche. No such irony attends Jena Friedman’s show about (among other things) the death of her mother, which – three years on from that event – is palpably raw and vulnerable. The parallels Friedman draws between loss of a parent and the decline of American democracy are lucid. But elsewhere her material on bereavement feels insufficiently processed and too painful, frankly, dissipating the energy of the 42-year-old’s big-hitting opening half.The jaundiced tone of Motherf*cker is established from the off, as Friedman enters the stage flag-waving in a Maga cap to the strains – and it is a strain – of patriotic country music. “I look like a Republican’s wife,” she says, before launching one satirical hand-grenade after another, about abortion in the US, how the Democrats should have run Kamala Harris’s campaign, and how her unborn baby resembles Jeffrey Epstein. The in-your-face material is greeted variously with startled laughter, sometimes dazed silence (“you can’t rape a foetus”), and nonplussedness – see one routine sharing the home addresses of Republican lawmakers, which might be more worthwhile for an American audience. Continue reading...

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