Jen Brister: Meaningless review – a furiously funny blast of rage

Available online With weariness and seething frustration, the comedian sounds off in style about gender inequality and sexismThe starting point of Jen Brister’s 2018 show Meaningless, now available online from Soho theatre, is that the Brighton comic’s mum has moved in with her. Watching it in the lockdown era, when contact with parents has become verboten for many, you could get dewy-eyed at that. But dewy-eyed isn’t quite how Brister experienced it. Her “dogmatic, confrontational, angry Spanish mum” drives her round the bend, triggering this hour-long tirade about mothers and daughters, “boys are better” and how still, after all these years, women get too small a slice of the pie. “Give me my fucking pie back!” bellows Brister, and the crowd (51% of it, at least) goes wild.It’s not just mum who has focused Brister’s mind – and her fury. With her partner Chloe, she’s now a mother herself to four-year-old twin boys. Other people’s confusion about same-sex parenting; other mothers’ unwelcome advice about child-rearing – Brister spits tacks at it all, not least because of its often gendered assumptions. Why don’t we let boys emote? Why can’t girls and women talk about their periods – far less the menopause, in whose foothills 44-year-old Brister now finds herself? Continue reading…
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