Vaudeville theatre, London
The standup refines his intricate tales with a note of personal poignancy for a set that will leave you drunk on its brilliance
We had no right to ask more of James Acaster – already a five-times Edinburgh Comedy award nominee and the first UK comic to shoot multiple Netflix specials. But with this West End show, he raises his game still higher. To the meticulous, mind-warping standup we expect, Acaster now adds a personal intimacy from which he’s hitherto fought shy. The result – two sets for the price of one, effectively – is an absolutely cracking night of comedy from an act at the peak, surely, of his powers.
There’s a rush you get when you watch a routine that has been burnished to gem-like perfection, every phrase and pause chiselled and grooved to maximise the surprise; I felt drunk on it after two hours of this set. Joke after joke operates on a plane to which standup seldom ascends, culminating in the extraordinary anecdote about Acaster being dumped by his agent. It plays such complex games with irony and perspective that you end up dizzy – but not so much as to miss the real-life trauma Acaster both conceals and reveals.
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