‘I realised why I never liked jokes,” says a character in Danny Robins’s new play, channelling comedian-of-the-moment Hannah Gadsby. “It’s because they’re almost always based on a lie.” So should standups make people laugh, or tell their truth? And what if the standup in question – a TV superstar, loved by millions – is a closet bigot? That’s the stuff of End of the Pier, an argument about comedy that flares occasionally into dramatic life.
It begins in the Blackpool home of ex-comic Bobby (rumpled Les Dennis), whose career was destroyed when a Guardian journalist, no less, shopped him for telling racist jokes. Today, he’s visited by his son Michael (The Inbetweeners’ Blake Harrison), a primetime comedy star now fretting over the career-threatening fallout from a stag night gone awry. Enter Michael’s snooty wife Jenna (Tala Gouveia), and the stage is set for schematic debates about class, comedy and PC, and plenty of improbable exposition, as family members spout backstory at one another as if they’ve never met before.
Even when Michael is staring professional oblivion in the face, courtesy of Bangladeshi refugee Mohammed, he’s got time for another set-to with dad about the politics of comedy. The play gives credence to his idea, which I’d question, that a liberal elite controls comedy. But progressive values certainly win the day here: Mohammed’s standup set, delivered with panache by Nitin Ganatra, ends the show on a real high.
Before that, Hannah Price’s production can’t quite conceal the contrivances in Robins’s plotting, which extend to Michael’s personality volte-face in act two. But Bobby’s groan-inducing one-liners – jauntily deployed by Dennis – and a choice sight-gag with a Smurf’s hat keep a sometimes stodgy play airborne.
• End of the Pier is at Park theatre, London, until 11 August.
