Rob Newman's one-off Greenwich Comedy festival gig ends with a poem about a pub-quiz whizz who opts to pursue wisdom instead of knowledge. Newman does something similar as a comedian. No slave to the quick fix of laughter, his standup is a means to a loftier end: the manifestation of the machinations of power, and of the plight in which humanity finds itself. Unusually for a comedian, Newman doesn't seem to find the world funny at all.
He's even more furrowed than usual here – perhaps because he's been absent from standup for two years, having undergone a series of operations on his spine. Mind you, the bumbling, troubled demeanour is not unfamiliar to Newman-watchers. His jokes tail off; he mutters punchlines to himself – this isn't a masterclass in standup technique.
And yet, there are plenty of laughs – good gags rise above downbeat delivery. If Newman's comic manner is reticent, his world-view is fearlessly unapologetic. The set, combining old and new material, ranges across a century of British intervention in the Middle East. (Who knew that the first British regiment to be deployed in the first world war was sent to Basra?) Newman then broaches peak oil, arguing that our survival will depend on, say, composting one another when we die.
You won't leave the theatre with a spring in your step. But there's something inspiring about Newman's search for jokes in the unlikeliest, and darkest, places. There's a neat routine about the extinction of the Inca; and a banjo ditty reworking Rock Around the Clock in Arabic. Newman brings a poetic flair to his pub-quiz verse, as when, after a failed high-five: "I watch their palm fade from the air like a firework." This is no display of standup pyrotechnics – but there are sparks of fine comedy, and Newman is as illuminating as ever.
