Laurie Kilmartin review – Oscars gag-writer unleashes a fierce and filthy talent

Soho theatre, London
She has penned jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and the Academy. Now she’s seizing the limelight with scattergun routines about everything from penises to free-bleeding

Laurie Kilmartin is not afraid of vulgarity. The Peabody award-winner flits between penis jokes, free-bleeding chaos and a taste for vengeance in this scattergun hour that marks her London debut. Having made her career as a staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien, Kilmartin’s own voice is crude, acute and pretty mean, delivering each dark joke with a furrowed-brow intensity, followed by a flash of a wide, are-you-gonna-take-it smile.

Jumping through the decades, the US comedian cycles through school bullies, the need for better assassins, and the limited dating pool of men over 50. There’s a pitch-black quality to some of these tales, with a particular knife-edge to her story of an abusive swim coach. Other anecdotes feel drier, like they’ve just had the dust blown off them; she settles too long on lockdowns, which I thought we’d all agreed we were done talking about long ago. Even a moment on Charlie Kirk feels like it missed the moment, though other elements of her US political commentary are easy winners.
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