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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
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On and On and On

Rose Matafeo

HBO Max · 2024 · 61 min

Rose Matafeo turns her phone’s Notes app into a stand-up set.

Rose Matafeo begins her first solo stand-up special in six years with a choreographed dance routine, claiming she is terrible at endings and wanted to front-load the memorable stuff. The rest of the hour is built around a sprawling, 16,000-word entry in her phone’s Notes app. It is a frantic, hyper-verbal catalog of her modern neuroses, failed relationships, and anxieties about aging, delivered at a breathless clip.

Filmed at London’s Britten Theatre and released on Max in late 2024, the special arrived at a high point in Matafeo’s career, following the success of her sitcom Starstruck. She taped the set while suffering from laryngitis and heavily medicated on steroids, yet she maintains a high-energy pace throughout. She spends the hour contrasting her lonely twenties spent dating posh British men with the indignity of getting dumped in her thirties. Notable routines include a polarizing joke that tests the limits of her crowd’s feminism, her frustration with online relationship coaches, and the realization that she has not grown up nearly as much as her parents had at her age.

The set list

6 bits

  1. The 16,000-word Notes app document

    Presenting 30 pages of printed-out notes in size-10 font described as an unhinged manifesto containing everything from grocery lists to sad poems and joke ideas

  2. Dating and being dumped in your 20s vs. your 30s

    Contrasting the malleable identity of one's 20s where you mold yourself to a partner versus being rejected in your 30s for your set-in-stone actual self

  3. Googling in incognito mode

    Admitting to searching incognito whether someone can get broken up with for 'being too cool'

  4. Tracking periods and male PE teachers

    Discussing tracking her period and the absurdity that a male phys ed teacher was the first to explain it to her

  5. Feeling like a spinster and physical pratfalls

    Taking a tumble to the floor during a routine about feeling like a spinster, comparing herself to Shelley Winters

  6. People who ostentatiously journal in notebooks

    Mocking people who write in paper notebooks on the beach while others are taking photos for disinterested men

How it plays

Tone
Self-deprecating, candid, energetic, and emotionally intelligent
On stage
Insightful, self-deprecating, and charming with freewheeling, chaotic energy and megawatt charm; roasts her own outfit and self-diagnoses insecurities
Pace
Blazingly fast delivery, racing through material with irrepressible and chaotic momentum, sometimes yelling and dancing energetically onstage
About
breakups and singledom in 30s vs. 20s, the iPhone Notes app, aging and adulthood, whether to have children, online relationship coaches and podcasts, self-care culture

What the critics said

Praised for its lightning-fast delivery, relatable comedic honesty, and sharp self-deprecation, with critics noting her command of the stage even while processing messiness and insecurities

In the room: Supportive and highly engaged with loud laughter and howling applause

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: chortle.co.uk, broadwayworld.com, avalonuk.com, imdb.com, decider.com, bostonglobe.com, en.wikipedia.org, theguardian.com, time.com.

Backstory

Filmed while Matafeo had laryngitis and was taking steroids; the material was prompted by endings in her life, including turning 30, breakups, the end of Starstruck, and bereavement, built around an ongoing 16,000-word phone note

Details

Released
Taped
Britten Theatre, London
Runtime
61 min
Where
HBO Max
Director
Barbara Wiltshire
Honors
Nominated for Best Show / Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (2024)
Topics
Before
Horndog (2021)

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