On her first UK tour, Californian stand-up Leslie Liao is something of a slow, gentle burn, as she feels out her audience. Yet by the end of this show, the conversationally chatty, engagingly curious and easy-to-like comic has found her rhythm and metier, picking apart the peculiarities and compromises of modern dating and relationships. Born to Chinese immigrant parents and raised in a predominantly white neighbourhood, there’s irony in her feeling that she’s socially encouraged to ‘represent’ Asians, because her performance never feels more like an act than with her opening routines, teasing white privilege.

This is perfectly serviceable observational comedy from a slightly oblique angle on mainstream Western culture. But even when she offers concrete examples of casual and inadvertent racism that she’s experienced, it doesn’t really set her apart. Neither do her repeated lamentations about turning 37 and feeling tired all the time, even when the childless comic jokingly empathises with parents as an aunt. Liao is consistently witty but her self-centredness, initially at least, seems slightly inconsequential.
Where she truly starts to come good is in setting up distinctions between generations, and the wildly different romantic expectations and realities of your 20s and 30s. Liao finds her distinct groove deconstructing dating through apps and the competing motivations of heterosexual couples. Drawing on specific elements from her own experience, she reaches for sweeping, persuasive generalisations that impress with their original insight and universality. Evoking the thrill and trepidation of potentially settling down with someone for life and babies, it’s effortlessly relatable but shorn of excessive sentimentality. It's a little bit gritty and a lot of it painfully funny. 
Leslie Liao reviewed at Òran Mór, Glasgow, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.