Preview: Aparna Nancherla in London

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Monday 5th June 2017

Think of the most acclaimed comedies coming out of the US in recent years - Aziz Ansari's Master Of None, Judd Apatow's Love, Amy Schumer's Inside Amy Schumer - and one possibly new-to-you name that pops up in all three is Aparna Nancherla.

The New York-based comic starts a five-night run at the Soho Theatre on June 6th, a rare opportunity to catch one of the rising stars of US comedy up close.

Nancherla's impressive credits continue: she was also on the writing staff for the major NBC talk show Late Night With Seth Myers - David Letterman's much-coveted old slot - although it's her self-made stuff that really sent up the industry flare that this is a hugely original comedy brain.

As well as a burgeoning stand-up career - which initially began in her hometown of Washington DC - two regular projects stand out: the bizarre TV talk-show pastiche Womanhood, in which two woefully unqualified hosts (played by Nancherla and fellow comic Jo Firestone) do their hopeless darndest to help the watching women of the world cope with such weighty worries as graduating, hitting 30 and surviving the menopause.

And her podcast with fellow comic Jacqueline Novak is a more constructive, conceptual affair than most. The excellently-named Blue Woman Group is a three-part freeform ramble about women, depression and the awkward places it manifests itself. There are improvised comedy bits, but also proper serious discussions about a subject that could always do with being rambled about a bit more often. Fine work.

What with America going inexplicably mental over the last six months, you can imagine that she's had a bit to say about that too, across various media: on stage, writing in the influential New York free paper Village Voice, and via her Twitter feed, which is well worth following. When Donald Trump defied pretty much the whole world by pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Change accord the other day, for example...

"I guess you can't agree with cutting back on toxic emissions when they are your whole deal"

Good point. And there are useful life tips too:

"One way to justify procrastination is to say you refuse to be bound to a linear narrative"

"My favorite networking move when someone else takes out their business card is to go 'you sell rectangles too?!'"

"The best way to make a three day weekend really last is to change your identity & start a new life"

Sorely tempting. But first, the Soho Theatre awaits. To catch Aparna's comic emissions, head to sohotheatre.com