Anna Burnside reviews a comedy set with funny yet truthful observations.
Jena Friedman runs onto the stage in a MAGA baseball cap, waving the Stars and Stripes. “Take a picture”, she urges us. “Tag me.”
“It’s to make sure I can get back through customs.”
Friedman is not a natural MAGA supporter. She may look like a Republican senator’s wife, but she is actually a terrified writer and mother, fearful of how she might make a living in a country that has moved beyond satire.
The Late Show and Conan star starts with waspish material about US politics. You can, she notes, compare Trump to Hitler, but at least Hitler served in the military.
POTUS also has much in common with Osama bin Laden - they both trashed the New York skyline.
But she soon pivots to more personal material about parenthood and grief. The imagery is still funny - having a C-section sounds like the medical staff making balloon animals with her fallopian tubes - but it’s pretty raw.
She does, however, have an excellent description of her venue, which is the Hive nightclub when it’s not a comedy cave. It smells, she says, like a corpse’s vagina.
Like so much of her material, it’s funny because it’s true.
Jena Friedman: Motherf*cker performs at Monkey Barrel Comedy—The Hive at 16:15 until August 24, 2025.
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