Modern pop stars give Christmas a wide berth, but comedy is moving in the other direction: Daniel Kitson and Tim Key have created festive shows this year, now here’s 2014 British comedy award-winner Nick Helm with Merry Christmas Motherfuckers!, a characteristically aggressive/depressive take on all things yuletide. There’s even a late candidate for Christmas No 1, although Helm’s tremendous There’s No Such Thing As Motherfucking Santa isn’t one to pop in little Timmy’s stocking.
That track (backed by fellow standup David Trent on guitar) puts a rocket under the show’s opening stages, propelling it to heights it doesn’t hit again. It’s not the first time I’ve preferred Helm’s songs to his standup. They impose a structure, pace – and an incongruous context – that his self-pitying breakdown-comedy purposefully lacks. That’s compounded here by blatant padding, as Helm, recalling childhood Christmases, bellows “he’s been! he’s been!” (about Santa) over and again, or makes a “ff-ff-ff” noise – for ages – to simulate the pump action of a Super Soaker water pistol.
But these aren’t fond memories. The stories Helm tells here are painful ones, of a “creative dad” who didn’t buy presents, but manufactured them from cardboard. Helm’s bitterness is manufactured, too, and sometimes unproductive: a shaggy dog story about an encounter with a stranger while out Christmas shopping boasts ill-will, but not much else.
There’s no stinting on self-abasement, either, as Helm strips down to a Lycra onesie and telegraphs suicidal loneliness. There’s audience abasement, too – a punter is brought on stage and invasively serenaded. Helm’s closing emotional collapse is well done – not caricatured; played almost straight – and his supposed depression never funnier than when recast as an anthemic Slade-style wigout. It’s the songs that distinguish Helm’s lurid cartoon of Christmas misanthropy.
• Until 20 December. Box office 020-7478 0100. Venue: Soho theatre, London.
