Sara Pascoe isn’t the first comic to get a laugh by appraising the precise dimensions of her fame. She’s rare in making a whole show out of it. One of two shows, as it turns out. Success Story is a night of two halves – the first chronicling the 20-year fulfilment of her teenage TV dreams, the second her life as a new parent. Act One is an amuse bouche, likable but not peak Pascoe. Act Two, addressing an experience that has eclipsed for her the importance of everything described in the first, cuts accordingly closer to the bone.
What the first hour has going for it is a lovely structure which mirrors 14-year-old Sara’s fruitless audition for Michael Barrymore’s TV talent show with a parallel screen singing gig for her 40-year-old self. There’s also a droll presiding conceit whereby – with reference to her sceptical therapist – Pascoe can’t be sure if her stardom is real or a delusion. All of which is winningly humble and heart-on-sleeve, with Pascoe as ever playing the overthinking girl-in-a-woman’s-body, maladjusted to adulthood.
For all that, her name-dropping stories of B-list celeb life (a brush with James Corden; getting sent sex toys by Lily Allen) can feel underpowered. I prefer the show when it addresses private rather than public Pascoe. Act Two opens with our host comparing having a baby to a recent psychology experiment that suggested we prefer pain to boredom – a routine which pleasingly recalls the boffin-ish anthropological comedy that made Pascoe’s name. But the excellent jokes here, about lactating at inopportune moments and the fashion for vintage baby names, are underpinned by real depth of feeling, about the emotional costs of infertility and this new mum’s world-devouring love for her tot.
None of this is novel standup territory. But Pascoe brings it to very appealing life, ever ready with a lovely, funny line (“I’m someone’s mum!”; “where’s the swimming pool?”) to capture those moments when you suddenly see life, or yourself, from a whole new angle. Her new angle on success, and what it means in light of new parenthood, unites the freestanding halves of this charming and open-hearted show.
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