When is a haircut not just a haircut? Ania Magliano’s new show spins off from one catastrophic trip to the hairdresser, when British reserve kept her stumm while her tresses were hacked ruthlessly from her head. So far, so likable lightweight standup fare, you might think – and you could say the same about most of Magliano’s show, which follows last year’s sellout debut. An upbeat account of the self-reinvention she embarked on after her salon calamity, it makes no claim other than to share a few confidences and raise some laughs – until a late reversal, which invites us to reconsider the hour through a different lens entirely.
You could consider that a devious late grafting on of final-act gravitas. But to my mind, the twist is artfully accomplished by Magliano, investing (more) emotional significance into her hour at no expense of levity. Rather this than the heavy hearts on sleeves by which trauma comedy is often weighed down. Yes, Magliano talks therapy, surgery and romantic disappointment in I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This – but with a light touch, and plenty of detours into relatable observational standup, about gossip and WhatsApp voice notes. There’s a dotty story about a threesome that never was, which paints our host as endearingly demure. There’s a section on her recent breast reduction procedure, which majors in beady curiosity about her surgeon’s motives, and climaxes in an arresting image of Magliano at the peak of both self-realisation and personal hygiene indignity.
All of this is amiably, unsparingly self-aware: see her routine about what conversation feels like from inside her head (“My bit soon …!”). If she’s not making herself the fall girl, others are doing it for her: the senior citizen she’s paired with by a volunteering charity; the pro boxers this new hobbyist inadvertently joins in the ring; not to mention the friend who (at least for a while) gets over his romantic feelings for Magliano far quicker than she’d like. There’s no danger of audiences not falling for her, and for this bright, well-wrought autobiographical hour on her strategies of recovery from, well, a terrible haircut, and more besides.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 27 August
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