You have to imagine Sisyphus being happy.
The frequently cited conclusions of Albert Camus’ 1942 paper treatises Sisyphus’ myth. Comparing all of human existence with infinite struggles.
Camus also performs in the heart of British comedian Sarah Pascoe, who has a bone or two to choose from on the show along with the French writer. This name is an equally brain reference to a book by philosopher Douglas Hofstadter.
This new, deliciously built stand-up set has been overturned and thrusts through Pascoe’s current, extremely bad daily run. This began with the birth of her two children and destined her to a sisyphean loop that wiped things out. But at least Sisyphus can roll his rocks, she cries! At least that happens outside! The wipe is not visible!
You can see the disclaimer. Pascoe loves her child and considers them the miracles promoted by the IVF, but these are quickly dismissed and forgotten as time becomes an entertaining but thrillless, merciless rejection, to name one positive thing about being a mother.
Instead, she creates a work of incisive comedy from the often-voiced and often neglected confusion. This must be endured to take care of your baby effectively. Is she her body? Is her body herself? Is she a gas sitting behind her eyes waiting for her to escape? Then there is the endless housework and the transformation into her body. She vividly describes it as “stretch marks and varicose veins covered in breast milk and banana skin.”
And, like many, she is incompetent in not contributing to chores, as she claims it is too complicated to understand. Pasco’s husband is Australian actor and writer Steen Lascopoulos, who has not performed compulsory courtesy for the local audience and instead emphasizes inequality that is still too caught up in modern marriages when it comes to mental loads, childcare and housework.
But the show is neither confessive nor confrontational. It’s a conversation. This set will fall over with Pasco’s charming scatty delivery. Early on, she imagines us having a light and generous catch-up with our friends. It builds on references to comedy films from the 80s, the comedy films of the willingness tone of her delightful, silly attitudes, questionable anti-aging interventions, the value of poetry, how the Bible can be rewritten. There is a sense of catharsis. Erasing fraud, late-night wonders, it’s awkward thing.
There is an edge of rebellion in the simple refusal to praise Pascoe’s motherhood. It avoids the social rituals we deemed acceptable to our mothers.
Pascoe gives the audience permission to laugh long and loudly and participate in the liberating rejection of the good mother’s law. Behind me the women kept saying to each other during the burst of laughter. And “Accurate!” The gift that Pascoe offers here to the mother of the audience is precisely because he has the space to place your self first in a world that discourages it.
