Redneck in W1

The London Comedy Festival's Soho shows are exceeding expectations. Irishman Jimeoin and South African Pieter-Dirk Uys are about to transfer to the Duchess Theatre and last night the lesser-spotted Alison Larkin opened with an engaging autobiographical monologue.

While the other two performers can draw on large ex-pat fanbases, Larkin's background is more complex. Do many Rednecks make it as far as W1? As she briskly explains in The English American, things are rarely as they seem.

The Grenfellish Larkin was adopted by a quintessential Home Counties couple and reared in Kenya before being sent to boarding school. Eight years ago, however, she discovered that her real mother was a resident of Bald Mountain, Tennessee. Not exactly trailer trash, but certainly partial to big glasses and purple-sequinned blouses.

Larkin takes us through her rollercoaster voyage of discovery with wit and skill, switching fluidly between accents to play both of her contrasting families.

Although the news was a revelation, things began to make sense. Perhaps this explained why she used to warm up for choir practice by singing the theme from Shaft and why she attacked her role as Riff in West Side Story with such Yankee gusto.

The English American is more theatre than stand-up, but there are delicious comic moments, such as her in-flight encounter with a babbling serial neurotic and her recreation of the whooping Southern-style church service that celebrated her homecoming.

The genuine premise, as bizarre as Eminem being Judi Dench's lost son, is both absurd and poignant. Avoiding cheap shots, a delicate balance is struck between stereotyping and sentimentality.

A lot is crammed in, from culture-clash gags to nature/nurture theory. Larkin might have been moulded by her nongenetic parents, but when she meets her biological father, their matching peccadillos take her breath away. Her final decision on her future is fairly pat, but almost irrelevant. Ultimately her aim is to demystify adoption.

As Larkin shrewdly concludes: "Everybody should be adopted. That way you can meet you are old your birth parents when enough to cope with them."

Until 29 May. Information: 020 7478 0100.