There’s a gap in the market for a British Doug Stanhope, although Alfie Brown, who is best positioned to fill it, would reject the terms of that proposition. His whole career, and much of this show, oozes scorn for capitalism and commodified culture. On stage, that parlays into sardonicism, spleen and self-laceration: Brown doesn’t make himself easy to love. But even if you frequently disagree with this hectoring takedown of the pieties of our age, you’ll never be bored.
Provocation is the keynote: Brown has an armful of subversive arguments, some of which surely aim more to ruffle than persuade. We’re all a bit racist: Brown’s analysis of our wariness of passengers who “look like terrorists” on planes. Men are victims of gender inequality: he rages with envy at the intensity of the female orgasm.
Slaves to orthodox thinking are derided: woe betide friends who ask him whether it’s fun being a dad. Brown’s cynicism, scattershot rather than selective, can be off-putting. Elsewhere, he’s aggressively sordid, but at least in his closing riff on (an obligatory standup subject, this) the 72 virgins awaiting Islamic martyrs in heaven, the Technicolor squalor sets up a thoughtful and intelligent punchline.
He’s funny, sometimes, as in his rant about people checking Facebook (“For what? For lumps?”) or his faux-academic broadside against Adele. He’s striking, more often, as in his vivid depiction of the act of falling in love. He’s antagonistic on a once-per-minute basis. It all adds up to a bracing experience, from a comic who won’t be filling gaps in the market anytime soon – and is all the better for it.
•At Soho theatre, London, until 25 February. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
