Susan Calman is a woman who takes pleasure from the small things: the secret thrill when her tights unroll unexpectedly down her stomach, the theme tunes of her favourite soaps, her cats.
While one suspects this former lawyer and BBC Radio 4 News Quiz panellist is not quite as kitchen-sink as she might profess, it’s not a strong suspicion. After all, her dedication to Prime Suspect was enough to spend several weeks recording snippets of DCI Jane Tennison’s dialogue to create a mock “phone call” between the pair of them (it’s hilarious, by the way).
She admits she is a bit of an oddball and it is a source of constant amazement to her that someone has agreed to marry her. Except, as lesbians, they aren’t allowed to call it marriage of course, and it’s this serious issue that underpins the joyous comedy.
Calman and her girlfriend will be “civil partnered” later this year after seven years together. They have drawn up a wedding list at John Lewis (she makes some excellent material from her mother’s insistence on including mustard spoons despite neither of them liking mustard) and have planned the service. But it stings that they are not allowed to use the term “marriage” and are banned from including songs or poems that mention the word.
She makes a subtle and persuasive argument throughout the show for how absurd this legal discrepancy is when their relationship is as loving, and as ordinary, as any heterosexual couple’s. In between brilliantly constructed silliness about mistaking babies for dogs and being scared of tall people, it is a constant and heartfelt note of seriousness that reaches a crescendo in the closing segment.
Calman is a natural comic with that enviable gift for making every moment she’s on stage funny. Several anecdotes were wonderfully augmented just by a look or stance. She’s also a born orator (perhaps her former career helped there), with a knack for storytelling that makes watching her a constant pleasure. It seems highly unlikely we’ll see her in a venue as small as the studio bar again.
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