Sarah Keyworth launched their standup career with two thoughtful solo shows deconstructing gender and the meaning of “boy” and “girl”. Now they identify as “an emotionally unstable non-binary person”, with a new show about their recent top surgery. The thoughtfulness is a constant – focused here not on Keyworth’s reasons for seeking surgery, and far less on wider perspectives on gender realignment, but on the more upbeat question of how that body alteration has been experienced by Keyworth and their close family.
As we expect from Keyworth, it finds a comedian measuring out their material with great control, to the slight detriment of spontaneity. But the 30-year-old knows how to architect a big laugh. There’s a fine one-liner about gender pronouns, and a neat reversal that finds Keyworth eagerly welcoming transphobic comments beneath their online videos. A running joke imagines the east Midlander’s gender journey as the creepy quest of a sister to be more like their brother.
