Catie Wilkins: A Chip Off the Odd Block

By her own admission, Catie Wilkins' voice is dry, detached and easy to mistake as an indication of sarcasm. As she heralds her arrival onstage with one of the most unenthusiastic introductions heard this August, it's easy to understand why she's always felt like something of a misfit, which is essentially the premise of her début show.

Wilkins traces her dysfunctional nature back to her childhood and, unsurprisingly, blames it on her parents. She paints her mother as an overbearing shrew, while her father, by contrast, is a man so reserved as to demonstrate a benign apathy toward his family. A dissection of an annual Christmas newsletter penned by the latter forms the highlight of the show, indicating how skewed his priorities are, while his response to the death of their dog is a wonderful piece of characterisation.

That Wilkins can get away with revealing personal details about her loved ones is largely due to her unassuming, deadpan delivery. She's gently subversive and although she tends not to sell her material to the audience, A Chip Off the Odd Block boasts a wealth of finely crafted lines and observations. As her set progresses, repeated call-backs lend it a solid sense of structure and it becomes apparent that Wilkins' is an assuredly distinct comic voice.