A previous Jonny & the Baptists show set out to Stop Ukip – a noble aim, if a soft target comedically. That can’t be said of their new subject, climate change: Armageddon seldom reduces audiences to stitches. Happy to report, then, that The End Is Nigh is the musical comedy duo’s most satisfying offering yet. Its songs are linked, for the first time, by a narrative, as Jonny Donahoe and Paddy Gervers relate what happened when the former recklessly promised his four-year-old niece that he’d save the world. It’s as broad, daft and punchy as all of their work, but here a lightly worn moral seriousness brings ballast to the gags and gigglesome wordplay. That’s a welcome development, given that, hitherto, the duo’s self-mockery has tended to draw their political sting.
Of course there are jokes here about the impotence of “two comedians from Reading” in the face of the climate apocalypse. But there’s something stirring in their refusal to submit to it. And I was oddly moved by their climactic rallying call, which proposes that acts of resistance, however childish, to the status quo are worth more than any grownup justification for inaction: “We’ll all stay alive / If we act like we’re five.”
There are hiccups along the way: a somewhat sour song about ugly babies; an obvious gag conflating Donahoe’s memories of two TV series from his youth. More often, I found myself enjoying the show’s detouring but fluid transitions between song and story, as the pair experiment with foraging, pee in the shower and heckle a former minister for climate change about his use of private jets. The Rt Hon offender shrugs them off; those in charge, says Donahoe, “don’t give a damn”. For those who do, here’s a spirited comedy show that never soft-soaps the grim outlook, but insists that fatalism and scepticism aren’t the only options available.
- At Old Fire Station, Oxford, 7-8 April. Box office: 01865 305305. Then touring.
