Sara Pascoe – Success Story
Theatre Royal Norwich
As a long-standing Sara Pascoe enthusiast, I came to the show last night with the preconceived notion that she is a performer that never disappoints. I left with the same sentiment- the woman is absolutely hilarious, a beacon of female empowerment and a classic candidate for a friend crush (she’s just really cool, isn’t she?!) Not only that, but I also came away with a newly found admiration for her candid honesty about her personal journey through IVF and how she has been navigating life as a new Mum. She described life with a new born as likened to “falling hopelessly in in love with a faulty car alarm!”
The first part of the show took us back on a nostalgic tour of the 90s and early 2000’s- when Take That and the Spice Girls reigned supreme and, as a collective society, we all celebrated not being obliterated by the Millennium Bug at the stroke of midnight. Pascoe started singing a few lines from Robbie William’s hit single “Millennium”- which the audience joined in with (good luck getting it out of your head- I certainly can’t!) This was the era that teenaged Sara really came into her own with a whirlwind of ‘Am-Dram’, local singing contests and a desperate plight to become famous, successful, and therefore liked an accepted by her peers.
The show was jam-packed with brilliant celebrity anecdotes, self-effacing cringe stories of her own errors and a very clever 3rd layer which places Pascoe in her therapist office telling her the same stories us. It was so amusing to consider her on the therapy couch reciting how Geri Halliwell told her she was a bad singer which triggered childhood trauma of singing on TV as a 14 year old and having the therapist question, ‘now do you think that actually happened Sara?’ They never want you to get better those bloody therapists- you see their little faces drop when you walk in and tell them you’ve had a good week!
Wearing an A line gold sequin dress with black stripes across paired with metallic blue high heels I couldn’t take my eyes off of her shiny effervescent presence. Excellent comedian, coolest woman, now and amazing Mum too- “If there was a train coming towards a fork in the tracks and on one side was my son and the other side was the entire rest of humanity, I would chose him in a heartbeat then be like- you’re welcome son, I saved your life and I’ve solved the climate crisis!”
What an absolute legend! Norwich loves you!
