Ania Magliano could probably tell you that you had five minutes left to live with a sense of gossipy intimacy that would make you chuckle naughtily. So it’s no wonder that in her latest show Peach Fuzz she pulls off chatting about a sense of disassociation from her own body with a casual breeziness that suggests it is absolutely no big deal – or at least, that we should just sit back and enjoy the ride.
And maybe it’s not a big deal. You have to think that the still-youthful stand-up – she’s 28 now, having made her Fringe debut at 24 – has presumably suffered somewhat though processing this stuff before transmuting it into lols. But crucially you now get the impression it is all duly processed. From a highly amusing bit of patter at the start where she dissects the slightly bewildering outfit she’s wearing and the reasons why we might be bewildered by it, to a (literally) climactic sequence detailing an unusual experience in a sensory deprivation tank, her gift is to reel off what would feel like sensitive confessions in other hands as if they were a choice bit of goss that she was so amused by she couldn’t wait to share it.
To some extent her persona remains that of the self-absorbed Gen Z princess: the sequence where she talks about Winston Churchill and claims not to really know who he is feels like she’s laying it on a bit (though it has a very funny payoff). On the whole, though, the exquisitely wrought stories of her own blithe self-obsession that peppered her earlier shows have fallen by the wayside and been replaced by an interrogation of her own feelings about sex and her body that feel both brave and even quite philosophical once you get past the breeziness.
As she observes at one point, this is all very different from the barbed topical humour of her Weekend Update segments on SNL UK, and frankly it’s great that she can have success with both. No matter how famous she ends up becoming, I suspect the future of her stand-up will always involve exploring inwards – which is good because she’s wonderful at it.