In We the People, Sam Jay talks politics and culture rather than talking about herself – and it’s a sign of the standup times, perhaps, that that feels transgressive. The show, nominated for an Edinburgh comedy award, takes the temperature of a divided America, and – even less fashionable, this – proposes how it might be healed.
It’s not a perfect set: Jay has a diffident manner at the microphone, so there are punchlines that aren’t audible, far less impactful. But the range, ambition – and sometimes quality – of her thinking makes something distinctive, certainly at this year’s fringe, of this cool diagnosis of America’s ills.
