The Best Job in the World, Michelle Wolf’s touring show is called. Whether that refers to motherhood (chief among Wolf’s current occupations) or standup (her profession) is left to us to decide. That parenting might be described in those terms prompts a very sardonic response from the Pennsylvanian, whose ear is keenly attuned to society’s dubious regard for mothering, and breastfeeding, and a host of other things women get up to without much fanfare. Wolf is here to redress that balance, in a show that flies the flag, tongue not always in cheek, for the magnificence of women in a society not built to accommodate them.
Exhibit A, as far as the 41-year-old is concerned, is the menstrual cycle – not just a woman’s period, mind you, but the whole (unheralded, poorly understood) month-long shebang. Exhibit B? Pregnancy, which should be discussed less in terms of “your baby is now the size of a grapefruit” and more: today, you’re manufacturing a spine! There’s plenty more where this came from, as our host unfurls the miracle of breastfeeding and (a mother to toddlers drawing her inspiration from near at hand) proposes The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a menopausal parable.
This is all good trenchant stuff, animated by Wolf’s familiar streak of devilment: witness the relish she brings to her routine about her infant son’s testicles, and her mixed feelings thereupon. There are a few deliciously catty gags rescued too from her sometime gig as Kim Kardashian’s joke writer. Occasionally, as with her riff on the bizarre extremes of female facial grooming, the persuasiveness of her argument begins to break down. And a closing point about gender-essentialist propaganda is tenuously illustrated by the ensuing skits about Stockholm syndrome and the children’s song The Wheels on the Bus.
But both those routines are funny regardless, and if we depart still uncertain whether mothering or standup is the world’s best job, it’s clear that Wolf has absolutely nailed at least one of them.
