Review: CHARLOTTE JOHNSON: MY DAD AND OTHER LIES, Pleasance Dome

An hour of stand-up from Boris Johnson's illegitimate daughter, Charlotte Johnson: My Dad and Other Lies is exactly what you'd expect. And that is the problem. The one long and laboured joke is that she is Johnson's overly privileged nepo-baby daughter, and that is it. There is no punchline, no surprises, and nothing beyond that grating gimmick.

The show itself is very loosely structured. Even though it started late thanks to a fire alarm at the Pleasance Dome, there is little sense that there was any concrete plan to begin with.

One sequence sees Johnson run a podcast where someone from the audience interviews her. The questions are predictable set-ups for her to remind us that is an over-privileged nepo-baby. An occasion murmur erupts from the audience when she echoes a soundbite from her father, but there nothing in the way of out and out laughs. There is another laboured gag where she mistreats her techie. Why? Because she is an over-privileged nepo-baby of course. And that is it.

The fundamental issue here lack of critical edge. Over-privileged millennials whose lives consist of avocados, yoga, and sustainable jewellery are ripe for satire, but Johnson merely strokes the face instead of punching it. Maybe this is because the persona she adopts provides no genuine insight that is worth hearing or funny. Her failure as a comedian is made blindingly conspicuous with her painfully awkward interactions with audience members. She asked one disinterested audience member who his parents are (because did you know her father is Boris Johnson?)

He responds sardonically:

"My mum and dad."

It garners more laughs than she is able to muster. But this was soon trumped by another audience member who after being coaxed on stage to take part in an embarrassing dance number, revealed in a moment of poetic irony that that he was a civil servant. You could hear a pin drop in the prolonged Pinteresque pause that followed this reveal after which he mumbled:

"You're dad doesn't make my life any easier."

But them's the breaks.

Charlotte Johnson: My Dad and Other Lies is at the Pleasance Dome until 29 August

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