We had no right to ask more of James Acaster – already a five-times Edinburgh Comedy award nominee and the first UK comic to shoot multiple Netflix specials. But with this West End show, he raises his game still higher. To the meticulous, mind-warping standup we expect, Acaster now adds a personal intimacy from which he’s hitherto fought shy. The result – two sets for the price of one, effectively – is an absolutely cracking night of comedy from an act at the peak, surely, of his powers.
There’s a rush you get when you watch a routine that has been burnished to gem-like perfection, every phrase and pause chiselled and grooved to maximise the surprise; I felt drunk on it after two hours of this set. Joke after joke operates on a plane to which standup seldom ascends, culminating in the extraordinary anecdote about Acaster being dumped by his agent. It plays such complex games with irony and perspective that you end up dizzy – but not so much as to miss the real-life trauma Acaster both conceals and reveals.
The first act concerns itself more with the state of the world than of Acaster’s mental health. Drawing on a family trip to watch the 1999 solar eclipse, it laments – tongue never far from cheek – the atomisation and discord of Britain two decades on. The touch is light, the jokes (like the one leading, as if inevitably, from teenage Acaster’s Discman to botched surgery on an aeroplane) come at you from unexpected angles. The writing and gimlet-eyed delivery marry beautifully. On the moon: “Orbits the Earth. Controls periods. Fair play.”
But it’s act two that takes Acaster into new territory. One knockout routine wrings ever more abject laughs from the humiliation of once being dumped for a very famous – but not very glamorous – fellow comedian. Then there’s the material about his wellbeing, his therapy and the bust-up with his agent. That routine openly admits there are two sides to the story, and makes clear Acaster might be hard to live or work with. One evening in his company, though – I can’t recommend it highly enough.
At the Vaudeville theatre, London, until 4 November. Then touring from September 2019.
