Bands tour classic albums in their entirety. Movies are re-released to mark big anniversaries. Great plays get put on over and over again. But in live comedy, revival isn’t such a big thing. It’s an artform predicated on surprise, the startlement of the new. Recycling old material is not the done thing. But might that be about to change? I saw two shows at Soho theatre revived to celebrate their 10th birthdays, two comic performers who clearly saw value – and a new audience – in bringing decade-old sets back to the stage. Both are presented by production company Berk’s Nest – who don’t rule out more of the same if these two go with a swing.
Both shows could be classified as “theatrical comedy”, arguably more susceptible to this treatment than straight standup would be. But the timing is a coincidence – and the two shows are (re-)presented in quite different ways. Joseph Morpurgo has been working with Berk’s Nest on a brand new show, his first since 2017’s Hammerhead. The idea to restage Hammerhead’s predecessor Soothing Sounds for Baby, nominated in 2015 for the Edinburgh comedy award, was a byproduct of that process, presumably with a view to reminding audiences of Morpurgo’s solo pedigree (away from Austentatious, for which he may be best known) before the release of new material.
Consider us reminded: the show is a potent draught of high-concept comedy – still coy, slippery and ridiculous a decade after its conception. It imagines Morpurgo being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. Sound clips of Kirsty Young are put together to provide one bizarre half of the conversation. Morpurgo supplies the other, recounting a youthful romance he once had, and stopping to announce this or that beloved song on a soundtrack-to-his-life LP. Each of the records are kitsch charity-shop throwbacks, and each is brought to character-comedy life by our host, playing by turns a dating coach, a posh piano tutor and the narrator of some unexpectedly horrific children’s stories.
It’s enjoyable second time around – although for me, not quite as enjoyable. Which may bring us back to the reasons comedians don’t usually retread old ground. The element of surprise, so key to laughter, is diminished; the delight of novelty dimmed. Maybe there are other factors at play, too? Ten years ago, this brand of creative comedy was less common, and pitching up in that landscape (produced back then by soon-to-be-defunct live comedy innovators the Invisible Dot) Soothing Sounds for Baby must have seemed more of an out-of-the-blue treat. We’re now more used to theatrical comedy, and qualities I previously admired in Soothing Sounds (the fact that it feels like three different shows in one, say) feel more like imperfections this time around.
In that context, it’s not surprising that I got a little more out of Jack Rooke’s Good Grief – the show that first launched the talent, and the themes, behind Channel 4’s hit sitcom Big Boys. I didn’t see Good Grief in 2015, when it was billed as theatre, so there was no second-viewing tax on my amusement. What gives Rooke’s show more interest too is that he contextualises it – not only by bookending it with reflections on his experience of making it, its success, and his current relationship to the material, but also by various nods and winks mid-show to the distance he has (and we have) travelled since 2015.
That’s easier for Rooke to do than it would be for Morpurgo. He’s a more open and convivial performer, his material has routes in for that kind of backchat – and he’s got a decade under his belt of audience intimacy and (a certain level of) fame. At any rate, it makes Good Grief 2.0 a delightful and still affecting watch, as Jack then and now narrate the story of his dad’s death when he was just a teenager, replete with video interludes from his gran and the passing around of Soreen malt loaf.
There’s a more explicit reasoning behind Rooke’s revival, too in that after the final series of Big Boys, he found himself at the end of a decade of grief-related projects, wanting to reconnect with the original impetus behind that – and with the young, grieving man he once was. It’s touching to hear that articulated, and to hear his rousing post-show address about how difficult (impossible, even) it might be for a working-class boy from Watford to get such a show to Edinburgh today.
As with Morpurgo, so with Rooke, both these blasts from the recent past give us perspective on comedy then and now, and a respite from the artform’s insatiable hunger for the new. Is heritage comedy the new frontier? Probably not. But we’re all the better, on this evidence, for the occasional backward glance.
• Joseph Morpurgo: Soothing Sounds for Baby runs until 20 December and Jack Rooke: Good Grief runs until 10 January, both at Soho theatre, London
