"Some people leave my show feeling hurt. Broken. Destroyed," says Reginald D Hunter, by way of an introduction. It's part of his considerable charisma, this offer of something illicit and hot-to-handle. Add it to his seductive voice, his poise and authority, and his exoticism to (mainly) white British audiences, as a black man from the American south, and you have a performer who instantly commands attention. Tonight, he enters promising the kind of plain-speaking, uncompromising show that such a remarkable presence seems to demand. And if he sometimes falls short, at least Hunter tries to honour the promise.
It's no ordinary comedy set: Hunter philosophises more often than he tells jokes. He frames the evening as a conversation with the audience, in which together we reach for the truth about things that are puzzling him: our belief systems; the divisions between us; our lack of self-knowledge. When he's at his best, his deep-thinking lingers in our minds even after being undercut with a brusque punchline, as with the decorous build-up that culminates in "your wife is a fucking idiot", or one ungallant but revealing old routine about looking at one's own "asshole" in the mirror.
Equally often, though, Hunter raises provoking subjects, ruminates a while – then drifts elsewhere without reaching any satisfying conclusion. His air of wisdom isn't always borne out by the material. For all the command with which he dispatches it, the line with which he wraps up one riff, about not holding people to the promises they make during sex, inadequately illustrates the point he's trying to make.
The evening is idiosyncratically positioned between standup and a How to Live seminar. It's sometimes funny enough to be one, sometimes insightful enough to be the other – and, just occasionally, smart enough to be both.
