Jessica Fosticchio: Iconic Breath review – angry and frustrating but delightfully funny | comedy

MJust as Jessica Fosticchio likes to be one of those “airport comedians,” she tells us, the ones who hide their true selves behind cool observational comedy, her style of humor is more personal. Her love life, upbringing, and relationship with her body have all been staples of Fostekew’s shows in the recent past, and she revisits them all here. Seemingly a show about forgiveness (if you don’t tell us, we won’t know), Iconic Breath ranges widely through our host’s life and thoughts, while evoking the qualities she inherited from her beloved but angry father and her positive, inspiring but recently deceased grandmother.

She’s a masterful mix of both on this show, with plenty of angry but fun rants about the things that interest her — including volcanic mockery of American female podcasters and a bit about the futility of meditation. But the show is also optimistic, charting a path through the despair of the state of the world via the touchline of her son’s soccer games, where she finds common cause with parents whose values ​​are a world apart from her own. This isn’t the first time Fostico has found rich comedy in her role as the doting but dismayed mother of a son who fully matures into the masculine stereotype, with a pick-up line in passive-aggressive filial insults.

One or two scenes here raise more eyebrows than laughs, such as the one involving the awkward pallbearing incident at her grandmother’s funeral. At the same time, one might wish for more sophisticated thinking or reasoning behind the ostensible display theme of tolerance, which is rarely emphasized. But if this isn’t an uplifting hour, it’s consistently entertaining, as this “elderly millennial feminist” rattles off the petty frustrations of cohabiting with her partner, reenacts an undignified ride on an absurdly crowded tube, and delivers a bulletproof routine about calling the pocketbook her butt while out for a run. She may never have been an airport comedian, but Iconic Breath is another Fostekew show that reaches great heights with impressive technique and efficiency.