The marketing image for Hayley Sproull’s The Baroness celebrates a lush lifestyle and throughout her show she fesses up to it with a repeated mantra: “I’m aware of the privilege, I hear it, I live it, I love it.” Her marketing spiel also says, “Sky-rocketing towards 40, with a happily untenanted womb and a life of love, leisure and lingus, Hayley Sproull feels less barren, and more … Baroness.”

That pretty well sums up her show, although I should add that she litters her delivery with so many “fuck”s and “fucking”s that I can’t help but wonder if she gives more fucks than she’d care to admit. Or is she simply releasing all the bottled-up intensifiers she’s not allowed to use on ZM’s radio breakfast show?

Hayley’s been a bit sick and at the start of this, her third night in Wellington (the first to which critics were invited), her voice is slightly croaky, so she opens with an hilarious riff on pseudoephedrine. (Now my own fevered brain is trying to conflate ‘pseudo-effs’ with ‘actuals effs’ and I fear I’m coming down with Comedy Festitis.) Anyway, her show takes off at a rattling rate to the huge appreciation of a packed-out Tapere Nui at Te Auaha.* And either the medication or ‘Dr Theatre’ soon kicks in and Hayley’s croak disappears.

Anticipation has been sparked by the keytar that’s preset beside a double-headed mic stand and we are rewarded with Hayley’s ‘Song for DINKS’ (Double Income No Kids), replete with a pre-recorded backing track and her own wackily filtered voice in concert with her splendid singing. Sadly that’s it for comical songs of the kind that launched Hayley’s career (yes, Miss Fletcher Sings the Blues was 13 years ago and people move on, I know). The rest of the show is racy stand-up.

The deep dive into embracing the childlessness with which she was born (sic) opens portals to related and unrelated topics that are all somehow relatable, whether or not you grew up in the 1990s-2000s, wore “gay waistcoats” or avail yourself of Botox, let alone therapy, in order to “hunt for trauma”. And if you want to know “how to fuck with a child who’s done something terrible”, Hayley’s your mentor.

Her “faloopa droopa” issues are offset by Hayley’s hilarity-inducing passion-eroding impression of a man putting his condom on. Her account of the worst sex she’s ever had may be viewed as verbal voyeurism or a salutary cautionary tale.

As for the ‘hall pass’ story involving Jason Momoa … Can fantasy ever become a reality or is it hubris to even hope for that? We’re sworn to secrecy so you won’t hear the answer from my fingertips.

There’s lots more to this show than I’ve dared reveal. In summary, it’s a raunchy romp through some high- and low-lights of a strangely relatable life.

*Tonight in Wellington is booked-out too but Aucklanders can see Hayley Sproull in The Baroness next Friday at SKYCITY Theatre, either 6.30 or 8.30pm.

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