‘Who here saw me on I’m a Celebrity? Who’s seen my penis?” Joel Dommett’s fame is of a very modern variety, the 31-year-old having been propelled into the slightly-bigger-league of comedians by reality TV and an online sex tape. The latter is mined for laughs in this extended touring version of Dommett’s 2016 Edinburgh set – infectiously stoopid entertainment with big payoffs, loosely exploring lies, truth and our host’s accident-prone love life. When it cracks on (in the second half, mostly) it proves Dommett to be no mere gatecrasher in comedy’s upper firmament, but perfectly at home.
The show’s weaker moments come before the interval, and stem, I suspect, from the task of padding out 55 Edinburgh minutes into a tour-friendly two hours. There’s some fine material in act one, but it is attenuated by lots of filler, as Dommett compulsively comments on his own jokes, mannerisms and the audience’s every titter. With a persona built on exaggerating his immaturity and gormlessness, it’s a risky business to perform a first half so thinly stuffed with good jokes – the risk being that we start to think the pretty-boy air-headedness isn’t just an act.
Dommett averts that fate, just, with a few big-hitting set pieces (a daft son-et-lumière routine about killing his ex with his “laser dick”; a droll dumb-show of his schoolboy nu-metal band’s maiden gig), and a Jason Byrne-esque flair for playing the lightning rod to the audience’s giggles, even when he’s ostensibly doing little to provoke them. But it’s only after the interval that the set really gets going, as Dommett launches into a series of stories about disastrous first dates, online courtship and that fateful occasion when “Skype sex” led to social media blackmail.
Most of this, of course, falls well within the established parameters of young, male standup, advertising matey-ness and unthreatening charm in roughly equal measure. Dommett adds a layer of slight camp, and a rising quotient of likably goofy recurring gags, about pranking his dad with mix-and-match movies, or being streamed into what was charitably known as “blue group” at primary school. The sweet spot is nailed where Dommett’s particular brand of cheerful juvenility makes neat but unspectacular observational comedy (as when he pegs the chorus of O Come All Ye Faithful as “the only time you could shout in assembly”) yield big laughs.
What at first seemed slight and ramshackle demonstrates, by the end, its slow-burn effectiveness. Latterly, Dommett’s crowd is fully invested in the hapless standup’s plight as he plays gooseberry on a Tinder date, tries to patch things up with estranged best mate Steve and dragoons a punter on stage for his feelgood finale. There’s also a precious gag involving a confetti cannon. It’s an increasingly enjoyable offering from a comic who’s come to big audiences via the postmodern route, and seems eminently capable of entertaining them.
- At the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, Saturday. Box office: 02392-649 000. Then touring.
