Anja Atkinson doesn’t so much take the stage at The Stand as commandeer it, striding in with the unruly force of someone who has no time for artifice. A Sunderland native with a voice that cuts through the room like industrial steel, she launches headlong into material that swerves between the everyday and the absurd — fetishizing bald men, family trees that fork into chaos, presidential role-play that is as queasy as it is hilarious.

The opening riff on Greggs is a small masterstroke: familiar enough to ground the audience, but delivered with such gleeful venom that it becomes unexpectedly operatic. From there, things tilt into the surreal. Her so-called “Flapachino” routine lingers long after the laugh, a gag that burrows into your memory with the persistence of a bad dream. Try ordering coffee the next day without wincing.

Audience participation is not an afterthought but an extension of her unruly ethos — unicorn costumes appear, dignity is surrendered, and the crowd submits willingly to the disorder. What might be slapdash in lesser hands becomes communal mischief here, a momentary society bound by laughter and a shared willingness to be ridiculous.

By the close, you’re left with the sense of a performance that resists neatness by design. It is alive, volatile, gloriously rough around the edges — and all the stronger for it. Sometimes comedy doesn’t need to be refined, it just has to make you laugh. Atikinson ticks all the boxes, and more.