‘Sir, are you aware those are women’s clothes?” Even the most basic interactions can be fraught when you’re transgender, and Sam Nicoresti builds their show around one such happening. Misgendered by a shop assistant, we find Sam in a department store changing room, squeezing into a dress from which they’re then unable to extricate themselves. How to escape this with some shred of dignity intact? It’s a big-hitting and farcical standup sketch, delivered with such self-deprecating joyfulness by Nicoresti that you almost forget the sensitivity of its subject matter.
That’s of a piece with the rest of Baby Doomer, a set that addresses with grace and buoyant humour our host’s wrestle with their gender and mental health. No tub-thumping here, just a high-joke-count hour from an act still learning how to be a woman (and quick to caricature how imperfectly they’re doing so) but cocky about their credentials as trans. It’s a step forward, and towards a more mainstream brand of standup, too, after Cancel Anti Wokeflake Snow Culture, the quirky multimedia offering that established Nicoresti three years ago.
