Comedy doesn’t have to be pleasant. But in even in the most cynical acts, we seek some redeeming kernel of vulnerability or battered idealism to latch on to. That’s what’s lacking in this set by the Australian comedian and new Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng.
There are technically adept set-pieces here, and the gig improves as Chieng starts sending up his relentless misanthropy. But for too long, it’s just one sneering rant after another, as our host rails at “fucking stupid” Facebook users, “stupid low-cost budget airlines” and the “stupid bastards” who take seduction classes with Julian Blanc.
For the first half of the gig, there’s minimal sense that this is a persona, a caricature of mean spirit. On the contrary, Chieng seems to expect us to laugh with rather than at him as he berates, more or less at random, Occupy protestors, the concept of Valentine’s day, and anyone concerned about data privacy. The repeated trick is to misrepresent things that “stupid” people might say – that iPhones inhibit human connection on public transport, in one instance – then shoot that argument down in flames.
Easy to do, when it’s a straw man of Chieng’s own devising. Were his misanthropy lurid or extreme - think Jerry Sadowitz or Doug Stanhope – that might not matter.
But it’s only latterly that Chieng ratchets the everyday snark up to full-blown ridiculousness, as with a joke about under-25s being forbidden to look him in the eye. A later skit about a vexing trip to the Apple store works well, too, because it depicts a scene rather than expresses another pissed-off opinion, and because Chieng at last finds vivid ways to express and displace his fury – such as the overwrought complaint letter (“I went full Beautiful Mind on this thing”) he addresses to the offending shop. He gets there in the end, then, but the journey’s a bit joyless.
- At Soho theatre until Saturday 5 September. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
