Kate Berlant: Communikate (Soho Theatre, 9 August)

There were moments here where I felt the two tectonic plates of humor, American and British, missing each other by a great distance. Basically, Berlant's schtick--not to oversimplify!--is to react improvisationally to the audience in the empty banalities of contemporary LA therapy- and academic-speak. If you are the sort of perosn who would find an offhand and nonsensical reference to "the archive" hilarious--and reader, I am such a person--than this is very much the show for you. Berlant is an amazingly magnetic performer, and her stage persona is extremely well-honed. The mostly British audience was not giving her a lot to work with, but she worked with it; I do wonder if two of the Americans in the audience feeding material were plants, as no-one could possibly sound that flat and North American and doofy. (Which is to say, there's easily a 90% chance they were real.) I found myself somehow on the edge of my seat throughout. This was more alt-comedy than comedy: more funny-weird than funny-haha. But good weird.