‘Is my American showing?’ Iliza Shlesinger flatly questions the crowd having just done a bit about 70-year-old war veterans killing people. If the Texan’s blatant accent weren’t enough to give her away, her material certainly is. That’s not to say it’s all stars-and-stripes – Shlesinger indignantly targets gender stereotypes and universal problems, such as weight issues, drinking and, um, imagining life as a mermaid.
The 32-year-old stand-up is currently in London making her UK debut and it’s about bloody time. It’s been almost a decade since she won ‘Last Comic Standing’, a sort of ‘X Factor’ for joke peddlers that not only rewarded Shlesinger with a quarter of a million bucks and a deal with NBC, but exposed her name to the rest of the world. Her debut hour, ‘War Paint’, got the Netflix ‘Specials’ treatment in 2013 and now her second show, ‘Freezing Hot’, has followed suit.
Dressed head to toe in black, with jeans tight enough to put her ‘vagina in a chokehold’, Shlesinger commands the stage like a dictator. She stomps about, variously pretending to be a dinosaur, a cocksure jock or a heroin-addled waif, and forces the audience to laugh. Not out of fear, but through terrifyingly honest, quick-fire stories with hilarious pay-offs.
Shlesinger’s most appealing quality is that she fearlessly delivers embarrassing anecdotes we can all relate to, whether we’re willing to admit it or not. Ever wanted to be thinner? More charismatic? Less drunk? Of course you have! She has too and she’s giving us all an excuse to chuckle about it in one sharply rehearsed and bluntly executed hour. And you don’t need to be American or English or any other nationality to get it, you just need a sense of humour.