Maddy Carty + Nia Wyn
+ Kate Smurthwaite
The Harrison London WC1
5/5

A SPECIAL night this, with two superbly talented female artists and a comic celebrating International Women’s Day.

South London’s Maddy Carty opens with the brilliant Days of Hope, which celebrates the defeat of fascism and the creation of the welfare state

Accompanying herself on the stripped-down piano she claims she’s no good at playing, she delivers a perfect interpretation of lyrics which stand out for their wordplay and intelligence.

With Pretty Face and Numberless We Rise she effortlessly skips from a song about her best friend to emotional respect for veterans of the Spanish civil war.

Her mash-up of Blowin’ In The Wind and Redemption Song is a fun insight into her influences from black music but her new single What Kind of Life and its lyrics about doctors, teachers and refugees is a reminder of her passionate politics as she sings of “a day and age of discontent and rage.”

No Shoes in the Summer, ConDem Age and Out My Way follow before her smile lights up the stage with the heartfelt love-song singalong Good for Me.

What developed Nia Wyn’s Deep South blues voice in north Wales? It’s unlike anything you are used to hearing and its passion and power is spellbinding.

Playing her own numbers on an acoustic guitar whose higher pitches perfectly mesh with her voice, she opens with the great Blue Grey Eyes. “You had your choices babe, now I will have mine,” she sings.

Mama Don’t You Know My Name, You Know Who I’m Worshipping and the moving intensity of the excellent I Can’t Breathe Part 2, dedicated to Sandra Bland, is followed by Tommy English, a number skewering the EDL.

Born A Woman is blistering and Outside the Chicken Shop, with its aching refrain: “Don’t call me sweetheart, Don’t call me darlin’, you don’t even know me and you never will” cuts to the quick before the sad Why Do You No Longer Put Flowers On My Grave? A near-perfect rendition of Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene closes a superb set.

There are no airs or graces about Kate Smurthwaite. From the off, she is gloriously mobile as she stalks the stage, mind and mouth effortlessly working in a whirlwind of ideas and joke lines.

She’s a natural who completely engages with the crowd and it is clear she really cares about her comedy. “Isn’t it weird when atheists call their child Christian? Surely it should be Godfrey?” she quips.

What seems like rapid fire, streams of consciousness — “I read in a paper that 12 per cent of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife” — cues up a routine about the US which along the way lampoons her American ex before she veers off on supermarket self-service machines, baby gifts, circumcised Geordies, TV and radio shows “arguing with fuckwits,” death threats she’s received and loads more.

Brilliantly funny, Smurthwaite brought this fundraiser for the Marx Memorial Library to a close.

She, like the other two performers on the bill, is an incredible talent and, like them, she will certainly be around for a very long time to come.

Review by Bob Oram