‘I’m the UK’s No 1 James Acaster tribute act!” says Craig Simons, bounding on stage in sparkly jacket and tuxedo T-shirt. But Simons is at a crossroads, fed up with Acaster’s indulgent mental health material and yet doomed merely to parrot it – at least until, finally, he launches a standup career of his own. Such is the conceit of this new touring show by the performer we assume to be the real James Acaster – although, in the manner of his 2014 show (and later Netflix hit) Recognise, in which he posed as an undercover cop posing as James Acaster, this case of tangled identity gets so twisty by the end, who can be sure?!
Picking the bones out of this conceit by the 41-year-old, the show appears to stem from similar anxieties to those that prompted its predecessor, Hecklers Welcome – which is to say, Acaster’s ambivalent feelings about his standing as a celebrated standup comic. According to Simons, Acaster has “painted himself into an artistic corner”, harping on about his own anxieties, ungrateful for his extraordinary success. The Simons alter ego allows Acaster to get back to (relatively) uncomplicated gags, and venture some trenchant political comedy, while giving him plausible deniability if that seems too first-base for an act noted by every single critic, apparently, for his cleverness.
If the idea that Acaster’s usual standup has disappeared up a mental health cul-de-sac feels overdone, it’s undeniably great fun to watch him cut loose here with a sillier and more carefree offering than we’ve seen from him recently. OK, some of the material (the baggage carousel skit; the “secret spike cap” section) is route-one observational comedy – but it proves Acaster can walk the relatable mainstream walk, when he wants to, as well as anyone.
More often, though, the content is as deliciously intricate as the show’s identity-bending conceit. There are lots of jokes that probe the absurdities of tribute-act culture, like the one about Simons trying to parody Weird Al Yankovic’s parody songs (“I wrote the original by mistake”), or the show-stopping set piece about Björn Again’s attack on Abba. In each case, you’re delighted equally by the daft world-building as by the rigour with which Acaster follows the logic of these odd recursive worlds, unearthing laugh after concept-will-eat-itself laugh.
Elsewhere, Simons delivers higher-minded humour when imagining the ideal progressive candidate to save Britain from Reform (there’s also a fine one-liner about the Greens being a single-issue party) – and cheaper laughs by slagging off Acaster, with whom he must face off in a bromance turned breach-of-the-peace finale.
Does any of this address Acaster’s supposed anxiety that live comedy is not a meaningful professional pursuit for a man in his stage of life? It does not. But as a vehicle to displace those anxieties, making meta-merry in a carnival of self-satire while also (we must hope) rediscovering what made standup fun in the first place, this new show could hardly be bettered.
• Touring until 27 August
