The BATS Stage is marked out as a mini netball court. A small table holds a glass of red wine and a trophy cup. Another pedestal holds something that’s shrouded in secrecy. So before the show even starts, we are intrigued.

Leaping back on to the Standup Comedy court for the first time in four years, Kura Forrester exudes a friendly confidence that suggests she’s returned to her natural home – although those who have followed her acting career will know this is but one of the genres in which Kura excels. Of course she is best known for her two-and-a-half year stint on Shortland Street as Desdemona.

Introducing herself with a pepeha that links to her Māori and Pākehā origins via whenua, maunga and awa, Kura offers a surprising suggestion for what else we might include regarding places to which we feel most connected. The audience love it. Likewise her shout-outs to the Admins who have organised group bookings and the Wing-Ds in her life, bring the netball metaphor to the fore.

Most hilarious are her impersonations of people in a supermarket and a service station who recognise her as Desi, some treating her as the character herself and even believing it all happens live on air. Critiques and advice on social media are something else again – and Kura loves it. There’s nothing snide in her reactions to fans.

Her most searing impersonation is of herself as a teenager, and sharing her Goth poetry from those years bring laughter from us that is equal and opposite to her po-faced poet’s lack of humour.

With friends and relations becoming parents, Kura has been experiencing the Aunty vibe. Her story about having to offer advice to her niece at the mall segues from comedic fun to a deep dive into past traumas that have coloured to attitudes toward men who smile at her. Achingly funny.

The friend who took her son and his mate to Disney Land offers a salutary example of parenting that Kura may or may not follow if she gets to be one herself. Hey, she’s bought an apartment – “The whitest thing I’ve ever done!” – and the shrouded secret, which I won’t reveal here, proves she is in training for parenthood.  

Her message to guys who wantonly waste their potential, and her physical representation of how she might counteract it, is as outrageously hilarious as it is poignant. That brings the substantive part of her 50 minute set to an end, apart from the presentation of the cup to a treasured Admin/Wing D. Initially ‘Here if you need’ seemed like a cryptic title. By the end of her show it is pregnant with meaning.  

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