‘Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room’ On Netflix Keeps Single Motherhood Cool And Carries On

When Katherine Ryan released her first Netflix stand-up special, Americans might not have known what to make of her — a Canadian who found fame in Britain, a single mom sounding like Sarah Silverman or a young Joan Rivers (which I said in my review two years ago).

In the meantime, though, we’ve gotten to see Ryan shine as a panelist on the Netflix comedy series, The Fix. So for her follow-up, the comedian who turned 36 on Sunday (June 30) continues her birthday celebration with Glitter Room, an hour of jokes about how she’s defying societal expectations about how single mothers should proceed with the remainder of their child-bearing years.

“I’m not really sure what makes them so angry,” Ryan says of male audience members. “All that it is, I suppose, is that I am a woman who is 35 years old, and I don’t have a boyfriend, and I don’t want a boyfriend.”

Glitter Room opens with a bewitching animated short chronicling her adventures into womanhood, motherhood and comedyhood (all the hoods, save for Robin and Little Red Riding). Then here’s Ryan, in a sparkling top. This is not the glitter of which she shall speak, however.

Although Ryan will joke at length about the lengths to which societal customs, including fashion, pressure women back toward longstanding norms, the actual “glitter room” refers to the room her nine-year-old daughter, Violet, has designed for herself in their London flat. Ryan did have to stand up for herself against the protestations of her male contractor, however; and by becoming financially independent enough as a comedian to buy a home and raise her daughter, she proved that she didn’t have to give up her own ambitions and follow a man to Japan.

Even if she jokes that she did give that a try, also.

Ryan filmed this hour in Los Angeles, and she’s willing to take time out of it twice to ask audience members about their own experiences. The first instance, it’s a man in the front row audibly reacting to Ryan’s insistence that 35 is “far too young” for her to be committing to another man (here she quizzes what turns out to be a front-row couple about their relationship history); later, she asks if any single mothers are in attendance, finding two in the balcony who share the comedian’s plight and instincts.

She commiserates with them in the knowledge that if they were single fathers, society would praise them with awe, wondering “how does he do it?” As women, however, they’re overworked and overlooked.

Choosing a career in comedy doesn’t exactly make Ryan’s life any easier, either.

She half-jokingly describes how some men suggest she adapt her stand-up act to appeal more to the men in the audience. To which she wryly notes: “Men have a lot of space spaces, like the Senate, and the world, and comedy.”

And yet women have very few spaces where they can feel safe around men.

Ryan asks us to recall Celine Dion and her late husband, and how we as a whole let the inappropriateness of their relationship’s beginnings and their age gap just slide. Ryan herself jokes about how she wouldn’t let it slide when she saw Hamilton for the first time onstage, upon hearing the song, “Say No To This” and rising up to say no to all of it.

Raising a daughter in this age perhaps has prompted Ryan to take an even stronger feminist stance. Even if as a mom, she still loses it from time to time.

Speaking of time, there’s a lot of speaking about time here. Precisely because as a single mom in her 30s, Ryan encounters too many people who want to make it their business to know when she will settle down, find another man, and make another baby. These people, she jokes, seem to think she’s running out of time for all of that.

“If I’m running out of time to do anything, it’s to hang out with my child while she still thinks I’m cool,” she replies.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Stream Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room on Netflix