Gig review by Steve Bennett at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Now, apparently, a single-name artist like Cher or Prince,  Iliza Shlesinger returns to the London stage after a relatively brief absence, during which her fourth special, Elder Millennial, was released on Netflix. 

It’s clearly won her fans, since she gets a rock star’s welcome at London’s Southbank on the first of two sold-out shows. And after she repeats a routine about being in her mid-thirties from that show, she has to reassure the faithful that she has brought  ‘new things’ for this brief British tour.

‘New’ doesn’t mean ‘groundbreaking’, though, and Fluent In English   is a fairly mainstream slice of observational comedy, predominantly running down a few traditions of marriage that she has no time for – a subject that’s been on her mind since she got hitched to chef Noah Galuten earlier this year.

The first of these, of the bride wearing a garter which the groom removes with his teeth at the reception, is not a particularly widespread facet of British marriages, so this extended routine, in which she painstakingly acts out every part of the ritual, is always going to feel distant to UK audiences. And her ridiculing it seems redundant as we don’t accept it as normal practice in the first place.

Next to be mocked is is the ‘creepy’ veil, in which she makes interesting but unsurprising points about its basis in Old Testament patriarchy. Shlesinger is keen to trumpet her feminist credentials, and elicits a few applause breaks and supportive Cheers across the hour for making positive assertions about a woman’s lot, if always not funny ones.

She sometimes touches the ancient touchstone on the difference between men and women, too, with males being superficial, choosing their partners on looks, while females are able to look past the physical shortcomings of their partners.

The longest routine re-enacts a hen night, which is quite a staple for comedians who have to deal with their rowdiness on a nightly basis. Shlesinger imagines it as a marauding medieval army, and brings it to life with spirited act-outs, which – true to to form – is moderately amusing but offers no giant leap of imagination, feeling rather too straightforwardly descriptive. For a similar blow-by-blow account of a girls’ night out, Britain’s Suzi Ruffell has a much more robust routine.

She’s more than  technically proficient – and certainly sells this material as strongly as she can – but shows more wit when improvising beyond her underpowered script.  Her delight at the encountering the peculiarly British phrase ‘woolly jumper’, for example, is infectious and fresh compared to her rather simple run-through of wedding rituals, which offers little in the way of fresh perspective.

• Iliza is at the Glee Clubs in Nottingham tonight and Cardiff on Tuesday before returning to the US.

Review date: 12 Nov 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Queen Elizabeth Hall