Review: Laura Benanti – Nobody Cares at Underbelly Boulevard

Rating: ★★★★★

There are performers who walk onto a stage and immediately feel untouchable, polished, impenetrable, larger than life. Then there are those rare artists who manage to be all of that and, in the very next breath, startlingly human. Laura Benanti, Tony Award winner, Broadway stalwart and now confessional raconteur, has built a one-woman show that manages to straddle both extremes with effortless style. Nobody Cares, fresh from a celebrated sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, landed at Soho’s Underbelly Boulevard with the kind of electricity that makes you wonder why it hasn’t been a West End fixture all along.

Part cabaret, part stand-up, part diary-reading after one too many glasses of wine, the show feels deliberately unvarnished. Benanti delights in undercutting her own grandeur, introducing herself as a Tony winner but also a four-time Tony “loser”, and gleefully listing her dozens of television appearances that, in her own words, “nobody cares about”. This mixture of self-deprecation and razor-sharp comic timing sets the tone for the evening. What could easily have been a glossy star vehicle is instead an hour of intimacy, sometimes funny, sometimes bruising, always honest.

The anecdotes range from the absurd to the devastating. We hear of the ingénue years, when Benanti was catapulted onto Broadway at 18, and the pitfalls of being a young actress learning the hard way when to say no. She is frank about the career injuries, the broken relationships, the postpartum depression and the minefield of perimenopause, or as she wryly calls it, “the amuse-bouche of menopause”. Each revelation is served with a comic sting, but never at the expense of sincerity. The laughs land hard and fast, but they don’t dilute the gravity of the experiences she is sharing.

It is this balance, of vulnerability and wit, that makes Nobody Cares so compelling. In the hands of a less gifted performer, it might veer into self-indulgence or therapy-speak. But Benanti has the instincts of a natural storyteller. She knows exactly when to pull back, when to push forward, when to let a silence breathe. The effect is that the audience feels less like spectators and more like confidants, drawn into the orbit of a woman unafraid to show both her cracks and her sparkle.

Of course, this wouldn’t be Laura Benanti without the music. Long-time collaborator Todd Almond is at her side, both as musical director and partner-in-crime, steering a setlist that oscillates between heartfelt balladry and gleefully absurd ditties. A toothbrush princess makes an unexpected cameo. A tongue-in-cheek hymn to people-pleasing elicits knowing groans. And then there’s “Mama’s A Liar”, a tender, funny and quietly devastating love letter to her daughters that lingers long after the final note. To hear a voice of her calibre, trained on Broadway’s grandest stages, up close in the intimate setting of Underbelly Boulevard is a privilege in itself. The room seems to bend around her, every vibrato perfectly weighted, every lyric stitched with intent.

If there’s a critique to be made, it’s that the breadth of the show occasionally feels ambitious for a single sitting. She moves from ingenue to mother to cultural commentator with such speed that certain threads beg for more room to breathe. There’s a memoir’s worth of material here, and Nobody Cares sometimes feels like a tantalising sampler rather than the full feast. But if the greatest frustration is that you leave wanting more, that in itself is a testament to the show’s power.

What ultimately emerges is not just a performance but a portrait: of womanhood, of artistry, of survival in an industry that thrives on yes-women and perfectionism. Benanti makes a strong case for imperfection as the more radical choice, messy, funny, occasionally heartbreaking, but always alive.

At 5 stars, Nobody Cares is more than just a Fringe success story making its way south. It is a reminder that the best performances don’t always rely on grand sets or special effects, but on a singular talent brave enough to strip away the armour and say: here I am, flaws and all. Nobody cares? London clearly does.