

Kate Berlant: Kate
If the Cockney accent Kate Berlant attempts during her one-woman show weren’t so charmingly terrible – even she corpses during the Dick van Dyke-worthy display – you might assume she was British, purely due to how good she is at taking the piss; out of herself, out of her peers and out of the sacred ‘industry’. Even the good-natured crowd comes in for a brutal drubbing, whooping with masochistic delight when she mocks them. Known for her surrealist take on comedy, and – as the show wryly points out – her uncanny resemblance to Kathryn Hahn, the California-born Berlant has been a mainstay of LA’s alternative comedy scene and a screen fixture for a decade. You’ll see her stealing scenes in everything from ‘High Maintenance’ and ‘Search Party’ to ‘The Good Place’, ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ and the recent ‘A League of Their Own’ remake, as well as fronting the wellness industry-taunting podcast Poog with fellow comedian Jacqueline Novak. But finally the limelight is all hers – and hers to skewer with impunity. Part comedy, part theatre and part performance art, ‘Kate’ – which has Netflix’s golden boy Bo Burnham in the director’s chair – is perhaps less absurd than her straight-up stand-up, but no less engaging. It ruthlessly mocks the sacred art of the stage and the deep narcissism of those who choose to parade themselves in front of others for affirmation. Smug Hollywood stars need not apply. As meta as theatre gets, ‘Kate’ begins as we enter, with Berlant sitting outsid