Comedy Review: Suzi Ruffell's The Juggle at Nottingham Playhouse

A packed-out Playhouse audience eagerly embraces Suzi Ruffle as she hits the stage like a pint-sized Dick Whittington in Paul Smith. She is energised, geeky and zany. Liberated by what she calls the Britney mic; she moves around the stage like an athlete doing highly expressive Tai Chi, on military grade amphetamine. Instantly engaging, this wannabe comedy actress who went to drama school, became a thought provoking and hilarious storyteller of a stand-up comedian whose appearances on Live at the Apollo are still watched by many.

Known for material generated from her Pompey working-class family, she now mines her Brighton based two mums and daughter family for material. She delights with the joys and perils of parenting, in particularly around making sure your children don’t drown in the swimming baths. Her pink-tutu-and-tiara-wearing-princess of a three-year-old takes centre stage. This child who has perfected the telling of secrets of her day, at bedtime to extend the wide-awake time by minutes. Her views on life are retold with hilarity and affection, especially as she contemplates death in the form of the dead family cat.

The trauma of the cat’s death provides her with a world of material. The vet puts a battery powered candle on the table for a minute’s mourning, before offering her their ashes from a single or group cremation. Ruffle takes us on a riff for a new TV pilot that would give the What’s in the Handbag show a run for its money, in the form of Lesbian in a Rucksack.

For all Suzi’s lesbian and feminist pride, she exposes her vulnerabilities, insisting she only took the Botox injections, to make her look like she looks like she needs Botox now rather than five years ago. She confesses that with her and her wife both arachnophobes, who were unable to go to bed because there was a huge hairy spider waiting for them and they only got to bed because after their pensioner neighbour put it out the window. Her theatrical stagecraft, lighting and smoke makes her ghost story come alive, delivered with Hammer House of Horror panache that makes the theatrical crowd jump in unison.

She delights in describing how her gay friend, who only sleeps with straight women, is now called Tina, as in Tina Turner. A settled mother and wife, she explains she has no time for an affair unless it is written into the family planner. She has the house in tears describing how the lesbians of Britain are unable to cope with the deluge of women coming out, embracing the faith, demanding to be serviced.

It appears with the state of the world and the country right now, that many progressive comedic entertainers are being forced to take a public stand against the pricks who full of hate, are less ashamed of their hate than they used to. Ruffle is no exception. She pins this down to the moment Elon Musk first read Mein Kampf. Encouraging us all to be more feminist, she tells us how her Bikini Waxer (the contradiction wasn’t wasted on her) had joined a Facebook page called Women Against Feminism. Adopting the mantra, she gives her child about being brave, she itemised to Miss Waxer all that feminism had given women, urging her to remain feminine and feminist. With authoritarian regimes crystallising globally, she argues that the right to a same sex relationship, like the progress facilitated by feminism is under threat. That it is time to stand up and protect what we have.

Suzi completes the night on an up. A quick costume change and tap-dancing shoes and this historical Playhouse is back in the Music Hall times. Ruffles is the Tap-Dancing Queen, singing and dancing entertainment from the 19th Century. We should listen to words of wisdom, so it is only entertainment and not women’s rights and our rights to love who we wish to love turning back the century. 

Suzi Ruffell: The Juggle appeared at the Nottingham Playhouse on
Thursday 20 November 2025.