Preview: Sarah Kendall: Get Up, Stand Up, Pleasance Courtyard

Published on 02/08/2012 16:26

FANS of the Radio 4 comedy series Clare in the Community will already be familiar with Sarah Kendall - she played Aussie Libby McKenzie.

This month, the comedian brings her new one-woman show, Get Up, Stand Up, to the Pleasance.

Inspired by the birth of her daughter, Kendall questions the kind of society in which we’re raising girls - a society where educated middle-class women are pole dancing for fitness!

Kendall’s material can make even the most mundane everyday situations hilarious. Take a recent bus journey for example...

NOT that long ago, on a bus, I overheard a group of teenage girls singing a popular rap song. It was about a pole dancer called Strawberry, who does unmentionable things with a bottle of champagne while the singer, Ludacris, throws $1000 in cash at her.

I had a flashback to my childhood. On a hot, sunny afternoon in 1984, I was dancing around the lounge singing Like A Virgin into a hairbrush, when suddenly, my mother stood in front of me, looking furious.

Someone was in trouble. I was excited, I was pretty sure it was my brother. I pulled a sympathetic look, as if to say, “Oh dear, what has he done now? Let’s sit together and work out a suitable punishment.”

But Mum yelled, “Stop singing that song!”

I was confused. Why would anyone stop someone from singing a song that was ace, radical and gnarley?

“Do you know what a virgin is?” she asked.

Now, I knew the song was about someone who was in the wilderness and they felt beat incomplete and sad and blue, but had no idea what a virgin was. I shook my head.

“A virgin is someone who hasn’t had sex,” she said.

What!?! Moments ago I had been quietly minding my own business, dancing around the lounge… and now I was having a sex-talk with my mother. I had to regain control and end the conversation. “I don’t care. I’ll sing what I want,” I said.

And with a freshly smacked bottom, I retired to my bedroom for the rest of that hot, sunny afternoon.

Nowadays, there seems to be a whole generation of adults who are terrified of looking square if they tell kids that some music is inappropriate.

When I described the Ludacris song to my mother, she smacked my 35 year-old bottom and sent me to my room... Which is why I’m writing this article under my duvet with a torch.

Sarah Kendall: Get Up, Stand Up, Pleasance Courtyard, until August 27, 8.30pm, £5-£11