Katie Norris is on a familiar trajectory in standup, from debuting as a version of herself so heightened as to be caricature, to settling into a lower-key Katie she’s happy to be on stage. And happy, too, is anyone who’s followed that journey from 2024’s fantastic Farm Fatale, which established her gothic, cat-batty spinster persona, to this new show – more straight-bat autobiographical standup, about Norris leaving behind the male gaze. But let us not overstate the case: there’s nothing normie about Norris in her third outing, in which she appears, imposing as ever, with a crow perched on her arm.
In a show whose theme can best be described as loose-fitting, she’s here to address one reviewer’s description of her as “a man-eating succubus”. Far from it, she retorts. After 143 failed first dates, Norris is forswearing straight men and their favour, and entering a new era – where women join choirs, go wild swimming and fearlessly untangle roadkill from the undercarriage of their Ford Fiestas.
There’s an easygoing, urgency-free swing to all this, as Norris renders her life phase in song, faintly threatening backchat with the audience, and lurid standup painting herself in chiaroscuro as a premature old maid. But that characterisation is scaled back here, as we’re offered clearer-cut routines about starring as a Victorian sex worker, aged nine, in her school play; and fangirling the eye-opening 00s TV show Eurotrash. I’m just as delighted by dialled-down Norris as I was by her larger-than-life forebear, as she roleplays a communal dip in Hampstead ponds, and performs a pop medley in character as a member of the Military Wives choir.
Neither convinces you she’s quite ready to join their gang – even as this committed singleton’s narrative takes an unexpected turn towards coupledom. For Norris-watchers aware of her long-term stepmum ambitions, that finale, with its entertaining song about dating a weekend dad, can’t help but be cheering – before the show (at least when seen on the Edinburgh fringe) ends more than 10 minutes shy of the hour mark. Norris’s new era looks like being just as much fun as the previous one.
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