Review by Steve Bennett

One man and a dog is most comedians’ nightmare audience. But for Maria Bamford, it’s her stand-up special.

Following the precedent she set with 2012’s Special Special Special, taped in front of her parents, her new Netflix stand-up show has been recorded in some unusual locations. She starts in front of the mirror, running through her jokes to herself. graduates to the front room (where the man with the dog is actually her new husband, though that’s never mentioned), then through roadside gathering, bookshop and bowling alley - eventually finding a proper theatre stage. But even then there’s almost no one in the balcony… she's still only niche-successful.

This approach doesn’t just make for an interesting visual landscape, but reflects her career path as a comedian, and the dives ill-suited to comedy she’s had to play on way to where she is now. For her difficult and complex relationship with the life and job of a stand-up is one of a number of recurring strands in this many-layered special.

‘The deep discomfort of the arts,’ is how she describes it, and indeed she never takes the safe and easy route, with raw, uncomfortably revealing stories about everything from her obsessive one-night stands to her mental health problems.

That includes a stay in a psychiatric institution and an enforced 18-month career break, when side-effects from the meds she took rendered her incapable of communication and cogent thought. something of a drawback for a comedian.

Yet the candour with which she unselfconsciously discusses such delicate issues is disarmingly endearing. Though the subject matter may appear tough, making it personal means Old Baby is her most accessible special yet, 

Known for her remarkable skill for grotesque mimicry, she here uses that talent more sparingly than previously, speaking more often in her own voice, or a variation of it, as she opens up to her audience.

Also on her mind is ageing – which she welcomes, considering ‘you’ve let yourself go’ a compliment that sparks a lovely analogy with run-down Detroit – and her recent marriage, giving her another outlet for unflinching intimacy to match her work.

Given that her career is the prism through which she sees much of life, it’s little surprise that she draws parallels between that and relationships. Showbusiness is indeed a cruel life partner. 

How she will cope in long-term domesticity is a question that goes unanswered, however, as she viciously parodies what she sees as the unambitious, unexpressive domesticity of suburban life and long-term relationships, including her parents, acted out with biting disdain. Even her gift of a hand-painted ceramic dog to her father sparks a marital row– and indeed another such pottery creation becomes a talisman for this show, forever in shot at all the strange locations Bamford films in.

Meanwhile, the stand-up is punctuated with footage of her half-heartedly trying to sell unconventional merchandise at her unconventional gigs; more documentary evidence of the painful awkwardness with which she navigates life.

Ever-self aware, she knows her humour’s not for everyone. She starts with a disclaimer that tastes are different, and later recounts a gig where a woman on the front row despised her act with a violent hatred. But you feel it’s that mixed reaction that spurs her on, thriving on the divisions she causes. 

Sometimes the self-eviscerating confessional nature of Bamford’s work nudges her content into what she accepts is dangerously close to theatrical one-woman spoken-word territory, but her eccentric charm and openness have us rooting for her.

And lest the emotional unload proves too much, we’re never too far from a spoonful of silliness – such as a celebration of the joys of peekaboo or a gloriously preposterous fart joke – to sweeten the rich, bitter taste of many of her stories, full of a dry, self-abasing wit.

• Maria Bamford: Old Baby was released on Netflix yesterday. Watch here if you are a subscriber.

Review date: 3 May 2017
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