The brightest moment in the first half of Andy Parsons’ performance comes when a latecomer takes her balcony seat, and accidentally kicks her shoe off and into the stalls. The Mock the Week man pounces on the opportunity, sidelining the script for some crack ad-libbing. It brings the gig to life, while confirming the sense that, until that point, Parsons had been rather going through the motions. Proceedings then perk up after the interval, when our host parks the fine but anonymous “I’m such a loser” shtick and talks politics and the state of the nation – about which he cares more, it seems, and has more interesting things to say.
My issue with the earlier material is that Parsons doesn’t seem to own it; it could be performed equally convincingly by anyone. The conceit is that our host is a shambolic man, that he is, or would be, “shit” at everything – from sex tapes to marathons, from high-diving to parenthood. It’s entertaining enough, but routines such as the one about bursting for a pee at a service station feel a bit by-numbers – and I wasn’t convinced by his supposed descent into depression at the end of the act.
The difference is palpable after the break, when Parsons concentrates on what he does best and few others do at all: jokes about politics and society, not about himself. It’s not just that the subjects here (House of Lords reform; faith schools) are less hackneyed and the jokes funnier (mocking the UK terror alert system for only ever upgrading to “critical” shortly after terrorist attacks), it’s that he explicitly contrasts this shabby, sold-off UK with the country he’d like it to be. Others drop their shoes into the stalls; this joke-rich rallying call for a less squalid Britain had me throwing my metaphorical hat in the air.
At Soho theatre until 6 June. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
