Susan Calman: Lady Like

Coming to see a comedian close to their home turf means you may be privy to any number of DVD extras that won’t come out at any other point during the tour. Thus Susan Calman has been gigging solidly for over a year, but it's only in a Scottish venue, and with a mostly Scottish crowd, that she can talk about her time as a corporate lawyer on Castle Terrace, the competitive streak between Edinburgh and her native Glasgow, or pick out an audience member to expound on the delights of living in Paisley.

The Scottish leg of Calman's UK tour will take her and her impressive collection of waistcoats from Peebles up to Inverness, spreading all the joy she can through the medium of elaborate physical jokes and anecdotes trimmed with a very Scottish silver lining. The less romantic parts of a long term relationship and of a life in comedy are presented with flair, whether it's an account of Paris's grim underbelly or of the realities of 'upgrading' a civil partnership in the most efficient way possible. This joy, ideally, spreads to each of us and to herself, too – by the end of the show, Calman implores us to find the things we like about ourselves, and forget the mean comments bandied about on Twitter.

Aside from wonderful delivery, reeling between excitable bouncing around the stage and close, conspiratorial whispers, Calman has an honesty which introduces us to the darker side of the comedy business. The fact that choosing comedy as a career usually does not come from a place of great self-love and confidence is often ignored, but Calman offers it up with equal parts of respect and mockery. It is a rare thing to watch an audience go from nervous hush at the word ‘depression’ to tittering away mere moments later, and a wonderful one to watch Susan Calman do it all with ease on a Scottish stage.