"I'm not saying I'm perfect," says Sean Hughes, as he mocks all the things the rest of us do wrong. But part of Hughes's charm is that he does claim to be, if not perfect, then at least right. It's an audacious trick, which involves first presenting himself as a paunchy, ageing singleton, then recasting that persona – not as failing at life, but a principled opt-out. He has sacrificed everything for his dignity. Now he's here to gloat at how we've squandered ours.
Hughes is not alone among comics in expressing dismay at the onset of middle age, and there's plenty of familiar material here. The disappointments of fortysomething sex are all well and bad – but the show is more interesting when his experience deviates from the norm. I like the roleplay that depicts his lonesome, lovelorn coup de foudre with a burglar ("Why do birds suddenly appear ...?"), or his voluntary work with people in comas, for which, he tells us, he dresses as a Roman centurion, just to confuse them should they wake up.
It's a loose-fitting set, spread across not just two acts but an entire lifetime. Hughes takes us back to a childhood flit from London to Ireland, then his schooldays, and later cracks some fine gags about 1980s pop. But no head of steam accumulates; Hughes so often steps out of the show to comment on its artful construction that his momentum is lost.
We're left with an enjoyable but meandering evening of curmudgeonliness-with-a-smile, whose dark undercurrent is crying out to be tapped more productively. Hughes clearly enjoys our unease as he quips about his use of antidepressants, say, or his childlessness. When he teases at our uncertainty about whether he's joking, he's at his most effective, as with a pro-vegetarianism routine in which he regales a bovine hand-puppet with tales of the abattoir. I'd like more of this – more poking at raw nerves, more indication that Hughes cares, more conviction that his odd take on life really is the right one. It wouldn't make him perfect, but it might get him closer to that goal.
