Mila Kopaeva: ‘Rage Baby’ Review by Alice Russo
★★★★½
Mila Kopaeva is well-known in the Barcelona comedy scene and beyond. She hosts wildly successful shows and has received numerous awards and positive reviews. Tonight, though, severe weather alerts for Barcelona and its surroundings have deterred most of the audience, and Mila is performing her solo show, Rage Baby, to only five people. It takes her a while to warm up—understandably—and over the next hour we are treated to a unique and entertaining mix of material about alienation, connection, and disillusionment.Â
For someone like me who is only a few months into the stand-up scene, it’s rare to have much contact with more established performers. Yet I know Mila well. You can regularly find her at Barcelona’s most open of open mics, the come-one-come-all shows where you don’t need to book a spot beforehand (Sh*tty Mic and Show Up Go Up are the two most popular). Among the first-timers and flat punchlines, Mila is there, trying new jokes or perfecting old ones. She’s good, and she’s not afraid of swimming among the masses to fine-tune her material.
What I love most about watching Mila is seeing the world through her eyes, and Rage Baby is an uninterrupted dose of this fresh perspective. Directly, she divulges very little about herself—we know she’s Russian, is unlucky in love, and has a difficult mother … but that’s about it. What Rage Baby gives us is the chance to get to know Mila in a much more intimate way: through the unique and quirky lens of her imagination. She mixes reality and fantasy just enough to be relatable, while being ridiculously, absurdly outlandish and hilarious. We can believe, for example, that she was once dumped in a fancy cocktail bar; that anecdote could stand alone as a joke. But the detailed and violent action-movie sequence that follows, complete with thrusting, bellowing, and screeching, elevates her comedy into a realm of its own. She can transform any mundane object into some fantastical situation—banana, shampoo label, cookie. And that’s what makes her ultra relatable: she articulates the wild intrusive thoughts and rage-induced fantasies that are inside all of us, just waiting to be triggered by the tedium of everyday life.Â
While Rage Baby lacks the biographical structure or storyline of many solo shows, Mila makes up for it by skillfully weaving her jokes together in a non-linear way. Even if you are familiar with Mila’s material, it’s constantly evolving and never loses its charm. Come and see Rage Baby If you are bored with the world and want a fresh set of eyes—Mila will certainly lend you hers!
This review of Rage Baby, written and performed by Mila Kopaeva, was based on her Nov. 4, 2024 performance at Imprfcto Parallel during the Barcelona Fringe Festival.
