Lisa Allan reviews Just Eat the Damn Sausage, written and performed by Harriet Moir, Little Andromeda, Saturday 12 July 2025.
The crowd is buzzing as the final few seats in the Little Andromeda theatre fill up. Harriet Moir is on tour with her award-winning stand-up comedy show, Just Eat the Damn Sausage, having already enjoyed a successful season in Ōtepoti Dunedin. The lights dim and Harriet enters to unrestrained cheers and applause. The audience seem to know her already, or perhaps it is her attire that elicits the response, for she is wearing an apron… only an apron. Harriet pulls a small barbeque behind her and immediately delivers on the show’s title by handing out sausages to eager audience members.
Harriet’s rapport with the audience is immediate. Her content is relatable and it seems that nothing is off limits. Everyday bodily happenings that others might go to pains to conceal are thrust without a sense of vulnerability into the public domain – toilet seat droplets, “titty hairs”, “backed-up cum”, and a car seat full of the laxative effect to name but a few. I appreciate how faithfully the set is centred around both readings of the title – literal, and smuttily metaphorical. Harriet delivers an hour of storytelling and musings focussing on the aging female body and the years of energy spent on bodily self-critique before arriving at a place of complete acceptance. This interspliced with many very funny references to felatio.
Harriet is a talented wordsmith and her sentence construction allows for a lot of satisfying twists that emerge as part of her style. Biographical information is shared with lyrical colour and threaded with a humour that just keeps coming. The parts that are serious are rolled out quickly, like a carpet. We get just a second to look before it is swept away. I appreciate that. It somehow makes those bits even more powerful and belies a compassionate storyteller who spares her audience from the dangers of dwelling in the dark, but thinks it important for us to know the truth.
A clever addition is the image of Harriet’s ten year old mullet-toting self as she flashes back to her Hamiltonian childhood, painting evocative images of her family life and identifying the exact moment she became critical of her own body. The show ends with the natural and satisfying audience recitation of the title by way of hindsight advice to that younger version of our host. Just Eat the Damn Sausage is a masterclass in Kiwi comedy.
Just Eat the Damn Sausage played for one night only in Ōtautahi but you can find out more about Harriet here.
Flat City Field Notes 