When you’ve pranked Theresa May at the Tory conference, or publicly showered ex-Fifa boss Sepp Blatter in dollar bills, performing on the Edinburgh fringe presumably holds few fears. But this is a big gig for Simon Brodkin, his first as “himself” rather than as cockney cheeky-chappy Lee Nelson. That lowest common denominator act curdled in recent years – and its incongruence with Brodkin’s real-world (often politically tinged) pranks yawned widely. So there’s considerable interest in this first glimpse of the 41-year-old Londoner’s “real” self.
It’s an interest he takes time to satisfy. The opening stages are almost as self-obscuring as his Lee Nelson shtick, as Brodkin plays – and plays up – the enfeebled middle-class family man. It’s more about jokes than authenticity, but the jokes are good, as Brodkin recounts the week when his wife left him alone with the kids (“We went over this this morning: I’m your dad!”) and sends up the monoculturalism of his leafy Hampstead Garden Suburb upbringing.
It’s a beady and highly controlled performance, suggesting a set scripted to within an inch of its life – the better for the “real” Brodkin to conceal himself behind, perhaps. A later section addresses male emotional inarticulacy, as our host tells us how little he actually knows about his lifelong friends. If that feels out-of-date, it clearly isn’t for Brodkin, whose post-Lee Nelson persona remains blokey, and who ascribes to his own fear of intimacy the fact that he “[hid] behind a character for 13 years”.
There’s a little here on his prankster life: we get a behind-the-scenes look at the occasion of his bombarding Donald Trump with Nazi golf balls. But the most striking section addresses Brodkin’s Judaism, and the history – and revival – of antisemitism. It’s done with a light touch – there’s a great joke about his gran’s fatalism about Jewish identity – but he doesn’t soft-soap his hurt at the Labour party’s current travails, nor the difficulty of explaining anti-Jewish hatred to his children. It feels like Brodkin’s still finding his own (as opposed to his characters’) comic voice. But it’s here – where his show’s heart lies – that he comes closest to finding it.
At the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 24 August.
