Stream it or ignore it?

Dazzled by the stars creator/star Rose Matafeo returns in Max. with her second stand-up special, trying to find meaning and connections in the 16,000-word note she kept adding “over and over and over” over the years into her phone. It looks very different when it shows you the pages printed outside the phone. But what meaning does it have when she gives voice to all this?

The bottom line: Originally from New Zealand, Matafeo is best known for creating, writing, directing and starring in the series Max, Dazzled by the stars. His first stand-up special, Horndogalso made her debut on Max in 2020, having won Best of Show for performing it at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018.

You can hear him right now on the big screen voicing the character Loto in Disney’s. Moana 2.

Matafeo’s new comedy special received a Best Show nomination this spring at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and finds the comedian revealing how dating and relationships in her 30s (versus her 20s) made her rethink just about everything .

What comedy specials will this remind you of? You probably haven’t seen what Phoebe Waller-Bridge Flea bag felt like a one-woman show before it became an award-winning series, but there’s something similar about the vibe Matafeo sets here, talking about her feelings about relationships, and sometimes even just that.

Memorable jokes: At one point early in the hour, after letting us know that she based this performance on her singular, endless Notes app note, we see what appear to be notes on the floor. And of course, Matafeo collects the yellow sheets to show us what it says are 30 pages of size 10 fonts printed with notes from its application, a “disjointed manifesto” of some 16,000 words. “It was not an easy read,” she admits, adding that she only needed to quote a single line from her note to prove her point, as she noted: “I may have a lot of problems, but at least I have a heart.”

Later, she jokes that not all of her revelations are very funny. “Some of them will be very sad poems that don’t rhyme,” she says. “It’s the most personal idea for a one-woman show, I promise.”

But Matafeo also has some real jokes, including observations about how we’ve taken the concept of self-care too far; how when you’re dumped in your thirties it’s somehow more emotionally significant and says more about your character; what is her favorite bus route in London and what she has witnessed along the way to make it so.

And she also falls to the ground for her art. Pratfalls after a while about feeling like an old maid leads to a fun reveal in which we learn exactly what’s going on and how it’s another sign that she’s turning thirty.

Our opinion: Opening a show by saying “I’m very bad at endings” almost guarantees some foreshadowing.

As for how she opens the special, we see Matafeo backstage preparing to continue, as somewhere off camera but on stage someone else has the audience roaring with applause and laughter. Matafeo seems rather unfazed? Instead, she bounded around the stage, dancing like no one was watching to the sound of Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principe.”

She may no longer be there Horndog she presented herself as she did before the pandemic, but Matafeo still exudes energy as if she both yearns for romantic love and is apathetic about spending the rest of her life with just one person. Maybe that’s how she might wonder enough to Google Incognito if you can break up with you because you’re “so cool.”

In a curiously overlooked moment of pun, Matafeo looks back on what her generation learned about romance, saying she looks back on that period with “rose-tinted glasses.”

Instead, she spends more time telling us about the old American woman whose podcast has helped Matafeo through her feelings in the year since she printed her long note. Has she grown up? Certainly. Did Matafeo make any major decisions in his life because of this? As she must remind us: “Have any of you listened to a single thing I say?

However, I would have liked her to follow up on this Zoom coaching session. Just for laughs.

Our call: Spread it. When she’s sprawled across the stage, Matafeo casually remarks about herself, “I’m like Shelley Winters in every movie she’s ever been in.” » And haven’t all the films Winters has been in been better?

Sean L. McCarthy works on the comedy beat. It also airs half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The comic strip presents the latest things first.