Desiree Burch is 46. For most comedians, this is the time to deliver your mildly grumpy show about middle age: the bodily decay; the annoying habits of the generation coming up behind you. That all features in The Golden Wrath, but it’s ratcheted up to the nth degree. For Burch, middle age isn’t a mild development, it’s a cataclysm. The perimenopause apparently has 66 separate symptoms, and Burch’s mind and body are weathering not a slow decline but an all-out attack. All-out attack is Burch’s performance style too, in a show that hurls at us her experience of hormonal female midlife.
It’s a blast – because our host is a charismatic, bombastic stage presence, and because she textures the comedy of ageing with moral indignation alongside the physical indignity. Burch sets the scene by placing herself generationally, holding up her own gen X experience (“we walked so you could run”) against those of the boomers, millennials and gen Z’s in the room. This isn’t always novel (“Do you guys remember the rotary phone?”), but it’s playful and relatable, skilfully softening us up for the onslaught to come.
Suffice to say, hers is not a perspective on the perimenopause that will have anyone looking forward to their 40s. She talks about the joints that suddenly stop working, the infuriating sleeplessness, and there’s a loud, lurid routine about “juicy pussies” v vaginal dryness. All those endless symptoms are itemised in a spoof advert for this grim life-stage, which Burch warns can last a decade.
Arguably the show overplays its hand, making little allowance for other, milder experiences of female midlife, and overstating the degree to which menopause narratives are unheard. A strand protesting about gender inequalities in medicine, with reference to a connection between menopausal “brain fog” and her mother’s dementia, feels underdeveloped. A subplot about her mum’s marriage and Burch’s childlessness are imperfectly integrated. But Burch’s extreme take on hormonal change remains uproarious, and is supplemented with strong standalone sections on her aversion to brushing her teeth and the contents of women’s handbags (AKA “a miniature bodega in every Louis Vuitton”). The change may be brewing for our host – but her standup skills are undimmed.
• At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, until 10 August. Then touring from 3 October.
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