At times during Ele McKenzie’s debut hour, ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, it feels like the comedian won’t be satisfied until she’s made the entire sold-out audience spasm in delighted discomfort at least once. Assuming a lugubrious, disaffected air, you can nevertheless see the gleam in McKenzie’s eye as she picks off her targets one by one with devilishly escalating oversharing. It’s a memorable show simply on those terms, so it would be easy to miss the clever structure and the artful riffing on a single central theme.

‘Bringing It All Back Home’ is based around Ele moving back in with her parents at the age of 30 following a break up, she regales the audience with/ subjects them to uproariously intimate details of her terrible fellatio technique, her masturbatory habits, and what three weeks of eating nothing but ice cream did to her bowels. Hidden among it all like diamonds in the rough are evocative stories of her relationships with her parents and her overachieving twin brother.

Describing her appearance, splendidly, as looking like the ‘fourth, feral Haim sister’, McKenzie has a distinctive stage presence. Perhaps moulding her image to her demeanour, she’s clad in a shapeless shirt and shorts. With her curtains of long hair draping her face, she looks like she’s stepped out of a portal from the Pacific North West circa 1992. Grungy anti-glamour aside, there’s very few comedians who seem quite so intent on framing themselves in such unappealing terms, almost as some basement-dwelling, wanking Gollum. It’s really quite something.

Don’t be fooled by the gleeful grotesquerie and the affected ambivalence towards her family. There’s a keen mind and a beating heart there (pretty much the organ she leaves for last to expose in all its bloody glory). Her storytelling is richly detailed and loop her themes back around in thoroughly satisfying manner. It’s all capped off by a magnificent, weirdly moving monologue that sees her fantasise about being fingered by the 85-year-old Bob Dylan. She finally takes him back to meet the family, leading to a cathartic strengthening of family bonds: bringing it all back home in other words.

One wonders what Ele McKenzie can possibly conjure up for a second show, having laid herself so thoroughly bare for her debut. But you can pretty much guarantee that everyone here this evening will be – possibly against their better judgement – back for a second gory helping. With her utterly distinctive persona and her articulate, abject storytelling, she’s an unconventional star in the making.

‘Bringing It All Back Home‘ is at Bunker Two at Pleasance Courtyard until Sun 30 Aug 2026