Chloe Petts proves a sharp but unshouty new comic voice in the culture wars

Following a very good Edinburgh, a previous sell-out run at the Soho Theatre, and a prominent tour support slot for fellow comedy socialite Ed Gamble, Chloe Petts is in full rising-star mode: part of the next generation of comedy elite that has already been handed the keys to the clubhouse. The qualities that make her so well-liked come through strongly in her comedy: she’s genial behind the wheel of her show, speaking warmly if somewhat vaguely to a growing audience of people questioning the validity of gender norms.

After a little scene-setting mood music comprising Sweet Caroline and Vindaloo, Petts spends the first act introducing herself as a football-loving queer person, including a few insights into her secret past as an aspiring hetero with an emo fringe and a clutch purse. The stories touch on her emergent theme: the idea of being misgendered or somehow misassigned by those around her, and how much that matters in a world where some – but by no means all – of us have moved beyond the gender binary.

She describes this theme in lofty terms of perceptions and paradigms, but the jokes only interact with these ideas on a surface level. The depth of her intelligence is obvious, but it’s also clear that she’s holding herself in reserve a little, hiding her light under a bushel of charming, simple anecdotes about being mistaken for a boy at the ice cream van.

When she talks passionately about football, she crackles into life, shifting gears from rote smoothness into genuine exhilaration. It barely shows, but you couldn’t blame her if she’s ready to move on to new material by this stage. Transience was pretty much ready to go in 2019, but the pandemic meant she didn’t debut until 2022. Many people have changed a lot in the last three years, and Petts in particular is young and smart.

She can be winningly sharp as well, great at picking on people with both love and acidity. The best bits of this show are her interactions with the crowd, although it’s a shame – and this is definitely not limited to Petts – that men still make up 100 per cent of the crowdwork in an audience that must be 80 per cent female.

If you occasionally wish she’d pull a little harder in any particular direction, it’s comforting to think about how well she’ll do, and how much a voice like hers is needed in the mainstream: one that brings a palatable soft power to the hurtful inanity of the culture wars.

Until Jan 7; sohotheatre.com