Soho Theatre Live: Mae Martin

Mae Martin’s performance in the first season of Comedy Central’s Soho Theatre Live series takes the stage of London’s Dean Street venue to present Us, an hour that feels more like an intimate monologue than a traditional stand-up set. The hook of the show is Martin’s effort to dismantle the rigid labels society forces onto queer people, using their own life as a case study. They focus on the comedy of gender and sexual expectations, exemplified by friends complaining that “your hair lied to us!” after Martin began dating a man following a long relationship with a woman.

The show, filmed in central London and broadcast in August 2017, captures the Canadian-British comic right as their UK career was taking off. Much of the hour is built on stories of their childhood under incredibly liberal parents, Wendy and James. This includes a memorable bit about their mother explaining sex at a far too tender age, describing the peak of physical pleasure as an “explosion of rainbows” and setting Martin up for a lifetime of disappointment. They also use the cast of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to explain the gender spectrum.

The hour moves between autobiographical anecdotes, like a family emergency involving their father’s anatomy, and a sober conclusion. Rather than wrapping up with a neat punchline, Martin finishes with a thoughtful reflection on homophobia they experienced in a London pub, arguing that progress for gay rights is far more fragile than people think.