Susie McCabe: Coming of Rage, Glasgow Comedy Festival review: 'scathing humour'
The brilliant final third of Coming of Rage has a tetchy, barbed energy, but it’s the vulnerable opening that makes it McCabe’s best show yet, writes Jay Richardson
Susie McCabe: Coming of Rage, King’s Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★
If anger is one of stand-up’s most potent motivators, Susie McCabe doesn’t have to dig too deep to find hers. The Glaswegian comic naively imagined that the heart attack which featured heavily in her last show would be as bad as life got. But after an annus horribilis and a half, 18 months in which she got divorced for a second time and her father died, she’s understandably raw, lashing out at the world, its misogyny and self-interests. She’s systematically attacking different generations for their complicity in bringing it to its knees, with punchy jabs of green-on-green contempt for Catholicism too.
So the final, social observation-heavy third of this rich, furious 90 minutes has a tetchy, barbed energy. But it’s the despairingly vulnerable, initial two-thirds of the show, in which she rejoins the dating scene and buries her father, that makes Coming of Rage McCabe’s best show yet – a growl of menopausal fury beautifully leavened by the ridiculousness of her circumstances as she tries to put her life back together.
Few would consult Frankie Boyle for dating advice. But McCabe fell into an entertaining tug-of-war between her podcast co-host’s suggestions and those of her long-suffering best friend, whose recommendations carry the ulterior motive of trying to eject the moping comic from her spare room.
McCabe doesn't downplay the emotional wrench of losing her dad. But she finds considerable, scathing humour in her frustrations with the admin of his funeral.
The closing section, in which she takes aim at Manosphere grifters, Brexit voters, boomers and Gen Z, has been seeded with just enough caustic swipes at the likes of Trump, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and fellow comic Susan Calman to keep the show thematically coherent. And she ultimately ties it all together by revealing the unlikely parental role she’s assumed for her nephew, his Rangers support ensuring that the circle of life isn’t closing too smoothly.
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