‘In all sincerity …” says Jordan Brookes at the beginning of the heartfelt audience address that closes his show. But sincerity is a devalued currency in Brookes’s show, and he knows it. The point of I’ve Got Nothing, like its predecessors (including the 2017 comedy award-nominated Body of Work), is that nothing he does can be trusted or taken for granted. He drills deep into the constituent parts of a comedy show, looking for cogs to disable or sprockets to twist into new, destabilising shapes.
Last year, that led to a hi-tech stunt requiring his audience to wear headphones. This year, Brookes is pared back. The conceit is that he’s “got nothing”, that he’s winging this encounter with an audience, waiting to see where comedy will spring from and pursuing it when it does. “What shall we do?” he asks, taking a rest, wide-eyeing the crowd. It bespeaks Brookes’s growing confidence that he’s funny just being; that his “hipster Nosferatu” looks and gangling, prowling physicality tip us into nervous laughter before he even opens his mouth.
Then there’s the material – some of it preprepared and ratcheting up the oddity. He cuts to the big issues (his self-loathing, our hunger for connection, the imminent end of the world) and addresses them seemingly without guile. In between, he drops non-sequitur gags which may be a key to something more significant, but he’s not telling. None of this plays by comedy’s usual rules, as Brookes flips the meaningful chat on its head, roleplaying the seduction of his mum, or incarnating the spirit of his own inner child.
It’s always gripping. You seldom know what he’s up to, or what he’ll do next. But for a while, it feels like Brookes at half-cock: a diverting show from a comic who has dialled down the threatening intensity, rather than the startling event he more usually supplies. Then he plays his ace, pulling the rug out from under our expectations of how standup shows end, and tearing that rug to shreds. In all sincerity or in no sincerity whatsoever? You decide – but there’s no question I’ve Got Nothing delivers one of the comic coups of this year’s fringe.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August
• Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews
