Helen Bauer's material is both defined and bolstered by her brash, crass and energetic delivery. In her new show Grand Supreme Darling Princess, which toured to the Old Fire Station for one night last week, the material is unapologetically aimed at women, a fact that Bauer underlines by faux-harassing and objectifying the men sitting in the front row. Her delivery is marked by warmth and frankness, always on the edge of laughter herself, like a friend across the pub table. Often, to drive a joke home, she will bellow the punchline in a gravelly voice.
The show is framed around Disney and the princess narrative: that women need to be vulnerable in order to find and keep a man. There are grimly funny anecdotes on the problematic so-called love stories of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. The material ricochets from mothers to school trips, to Bauer’s elite babysitting skills for neurodivergent kids, to therapy, masturbation (by way of the perils of sharing a family computer growing up), and more. It’s definitely worth noting Bauer’s delivery and timing are consistently polished and I did laugh throughout her show.
Bauer’s persona revels in unpicking what is and isn’t considered feminine. A lot of the jokes are about how she’s loud, tall, plus size, loves alcohol and food, and has never had a long-term relationship, and has the audacity to be entirely confident anyway. This mostly works, except when the material takes on a slightly glib edge.
Her mining of the parts of womanhood deemed unacceptable reminded a lot of Amy Schumer’s comedy. I think what made Schumer so resonant - particularly with other women - in her stand-up and sketch show heyday was her willingness to play clueless, self-absorbed, unlikable characters. She said stupid, outrageous, unfeminist things in her own voice, to highlight their absurdity. Bauer for the most part, directs her disdain towards other women failing to be feminist enough. The show feels a bit like Helen supremacy, so when she makes fun of the ‘basic bitches’ in the crowd, doing repeat impressions of vocal fry, mocking their mini bottles of prosecco, or poking fun at her one friend’s thinness, it can come off as a bit ‘not like other girls’ mean-spirited. It undercuts the blaring message of empowerment slightly.
The same can be said for her section on the weight limits at fairground rides.
Bauer, a plus-size woman, started researching Disneyland rides ahead of her trip there and stumbled upon a very large, very unemotive couple’s ride reviews. Her impression of the two of them starts off as innocuous enough, simply emphasizing their drollness, but eventually descends into the classic, humourless fatphobia of ‘isn’t funny watching fat people manoeuvre their bodies?’
Bauer’s own size, I suppose, is meant to lend the jokes a sort of credibility: it’s okay to laugh because the joke teller is part of the group being picked on. But it was clear from the anecdote that these two were much larger than Bauer herself, and to me, it played into the queasy idea that there is a threshold where fat bodies forfeit their right to dignity. It’s what’s at the root of the ‘You’re not fat, you’re beautiful’ reassurance, often said to plus-size women, the implication that if you are beautiful, worthwhile, dignified, you can’t also be fat, because it is the antonym to those things. Which is to say: Bauer’s worthwhile, her targets? Just fat.
The set ends with a longer, painfully funny story about Bauer’s sleepwalking, and the disaster it caused at a hotel, which plays to her strengths and left me in stitches. It found me wishing that the show had more extended anecdotes and self-reflection amongst its frenetic energy. There’s no doubt Helen Bauer is a highly polished and capable comic, and I hope she harnesses more of the high notes of the show in the future.