Review from the Suffolk festival

Michelle De Swarte has an easy confidence and an open, conversational style that charms. But for much of her Latitude set there isn’t much hunger for a punchline - which is especially surprising when you find out she learned her craft on the New York scene, where jokes are usually paramount.

She opens by talking about how she’s going to get wasted at the festival, despite her friend losing her drugs, which might be true but where’s the gag? A question that crops up rather too often, despite her disarming honesty.

Conversation turns to the cost-of-living crisis and how she might have to give up her £65-a-jar skincare regime for Nivea. Ugh. Middle-class Latitude might be able to empathise but it’s hardly food bank territory.

But it fits with her shtick, to be straight-talking and slightly selfish. There’s been a salad shortage? Who cares. Doesn’t affect her. Though when she encounters the truly posh gymkhana set, she sneers at them too.

The more personally confessional routines strike harder. A strong routine delves into therapy - encapsulated by wonderfully reductive line – while talk of her former cocaine habit (well, she was previously a model…) is intriguing, though she doesn’t have  the time to fully delve into this over her half-hour set. She has the seeds, maybe, for a relaxed storytelling show about her life, but it seems underpowered here.

Review date: 23 Jul 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Latitude