Rose Matafeo

Rose Matafeo performs like the most energetic person at a party who just decided to tell you her entire romantic history. She moves across the stage with a loose, bouncing energy, matching a fast-talking delivery with large, cartoonish gestures. She stretches her vowels, shoots wide-eyed, shocked glances at the front row, and will occasionally pause a breathless monologue to sincerely ask the audience, “Was that good?” She uses every inch of a theater stage, sometimes projecting a massive, unedited Notes app entry onto a screen behind her just to prove exactly how obsessive she can get.

The New Zealand-born, London-based comic created and starred in the BBC television series Starstruck, playing a version of the messy romantic lead she perfected in her standup. Winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2018 moved her into major theaters, but her live act hasn’t softened into a comfortable victory lap.

She remains a comic who uses the stage as a place to loudly and publicly overshare.

She frames a bad kiss or a teenage fixation on early-2000s indie rock as a matter of life and death. The material relies on her total unwillingness to let a perceived slight go, unpacking her own obsessive tendencies in real time. When the confessional stories get too tense, she breaks the mood with a pivot into physical silliness, suddenly executing a choreographed dance routine or acting out a breakup as if she were a melodramatic movie star.