‘The future of Scottish standup,” comedian Daniel Sloss has called Connor Burns, who now embarks on his first UK tour. On the basis of Vertigo, that’s not a particularly cheering forecast. It finds the Edinburgh man, aged 29, on the brink of a career breakthrough, reflecting on sexy accents, gender equality, and his journey from his working-class roots. We are discouraged from taking any of it remotely seriously, mind you, because “I’m a fucking idiot”, he says, and nothing in the show aspires to any significance whatsoever.
That’s fair enough in principle, if dispiriting when attached to the idea that anyone who likes comedy with substance is “arty-farty”. It also seeks impunity for the unlovely opinions that Burns’ jokes sometimes imply, like the one about women being rubbish at sports, or the one comparing Stephen Hawking to Henry Hoover. We’re very much in a Gervais-alike aren’t-I-shocking? realm here, where unoriginal prejudices are dressed up as sharp-eyed comedy. See Burns’ mockery of Gen Z kids with ADHD, for example, or his punchline about Madeleine McCann, which would last have felt fresh when Burns was in short trousers.
Novelty is likewise absent from his routine about cunnilingus, which reveals – no bold leap forward for standup, this – that men sometimes find the clitoris tricky to locate. At least that riff is pepped up by its goofy act-out, which finds our host receiving sexual instruction from a lesbian in a control tower. If the jokes here seldom bring new perspectives to bear, they can be well told, with neat reversals (see the gag about the deaf dog) and flashes of performing flair (as with the otherwise weak section on accents you wouldn’t wish to hear in the bedroom).
To the reheated chauvinism that Burns mainly offers, a veneer of 21st-century respectability is administered by hymns to the strong women in his life and remarks along the lines of “women are so much smarter than men”. Burns may go on to make better shows than Vertigo. In the meantime, his standup feels less like the future of comedy than a makeover applied to its tired past.
• Touring until 24 March
