Last year, a late reveal recast Ania Magliano’s lighthearted comedy set as something more meaningful entirely. There’s nothing quite so eye-catching this year, but Forgive Me, Father is another masterclass in threading emotional significance through otherwise weightless and joyful autobiographical standup. It finds the 26-year-old teetering on the edge of romantic commitment: now cohabiting, and ostensibly very happy, with a boyfriend who has form for long-termism – and yet prone to starting arguments that erode the relationship’s likely longevity.
Why? To discover, we must revisit Magliano’s infancy as the child of divorce, and her several recent trips to the doctor to hunt down her lost contraceptive coil. Intrusive medical procedures have long provided standups with crowd-pleasing material, and that’s the case again here. But it doesn’t feel as cheap in Magliano’s hands as it can elsewhere, because it’s well woven into the tale of her commitment-phobia. Nor is it the show’s biggest-hitting sequence. That would be a set-piece about “the world’s most powerful vibrator”, which our host must connect (droll image, this) via extension cable and whose awesome powers extend not just to satisfying the sex drive but, on this evidence, the funny bone too.
In between these bulletproof set-pieces, we review Magliano’s top five celebrity breakups, weigh up what humans might be like with “one big tooth”, and consider her habit of taping over her mouth before sleep. There are no great surprises in the conclusion to which these gags and narrative strands tend. But Magliano leads us there with the lightest touch, and reaches the destination charmingly, with an excellent callback to a routine about appropriating the opinions of her well-informed boyfriend.
There are memorable jokes along the way, too, like the one about her partner’s previous eight-year relationship, and the image of Magliano secretively stalking that ex online “like a dead relative watching from heaven”. This well-constructed piece of standup storytelling doesn’t pretend to great profundity, but understands that stories, even funny ones, are better if they mean something. It feels like the work of a comic entering the big league by stealth.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August
