Walking into the Michael Fowler Centre last Tuesday night I worried that I might already know all of Kevin Bridges’ best material. I’ve seen so many online clips of the prolific comedian’s live performances across the past decade or so, I feared it could be a night of few genuine surprises.
But that outcome, of course, would be completely at odds with one of stand-up’s many unwritten rules; a new tour - in this case, Bridges’ ‘The Overdue Catch-Up’ tour - is almost always about unveiling brand new work. New stories, new jokes, and a bunch of fresh takes. A new tour is the comedy equivalent of a musician or band releasing a brand new album.
In fact, Bridges must have wondered what all the fuss was about when he arrived on stage, just after a chorus of boos rang out around the venue – on account of some jobsworth “security steward” having asked a group of patrons to remove the large Saltire they’d hung from the front row of the theatre’s second tier.
It turns out “Owen fae Dunfermline” was responsible for that little piece of mischievous patriotism, and the Saltire soon reappeared, exactly where it shouldn’t. Bridges quickly spotted it and immediately had a little fun with Owen during the first segment of his set.
Bridges loves a bit of banter with his audience, and for the most part that’s one of the best things about his comedy. The connection, the humanity, the cheeky-chappy persona, and the sense that he’s really just an ordinary guy getting paid to share his close observations about everyday life. But it doesn’t always work out, and it could be that on this particular night, Bridges overestimated the intelligence of those he was about to banter with.
It was a feature of the night, and not necessarily in a good way. Pass marks and bouquets for Owen, and a “57-year-old” man who challenged Bridges’ assertion that teenagers drink less these days, but a firm brickbat to the clearly drunk English woman who kept wanting to involve herself. “You’re a cunt” she yelled, to the appreciation of exactly nobody, before Bridges reminded her - and perhaps himself, through gritted teeth - that he was “a cunt she was paying money to see”.
And a brickbat to the guy wearing “the Cowboys” tee who refused to engage, and perhaps an only slightly less violent gong for Bridges’ selected “local” translator in the front row, who tried to engage but evidently had issues speaking the language coherently.
Sometimes audience engagement works out just fine and adds to the flavour of the gig, but on this occasion it only seemed to leave Bridges scratching his head and regretting it. At one or two moments, particularly near the end, Bridges had to essentially beg rogue wannabe participants to quieten down just so he could get to the end of his story.
Other than those unforeseen hiccups, Bridges was in pretty good form. He reminded us that so much has happened in the six years since he was last in Wellington, with warzones in Europe and the Middle East, with Covid, and the small matter of him getting married and becoming a father during that period.
Covid and its fall-out is ripe subject matter at present naturally, and Bridges returned to it a few times during the course of a set which also had gags around bullying, cancel culture, insomnia, social media, technology and the internet, yet one of the biggest cheers - but not so much for yours truly - was reserved for a tale about hemorrhoids which crossed over nicely with an amusing observation about Instagram gym junkies.
Now in his mid-30s, although he seems to have been around a lot longer, Bridges also indulged in morsels of obligatory self-deprecation, having a laugh at the boy and young man he was, while also having a wee crack at his older present day self.
He managed around 80 minutes and was good value for most of it, all unwanted interruptions aside. All of his gags were new to me, and I suspect many of these stories will only get better, and probably even added to, as the tour continues.
The opener/support slot was Londoner Carl Donnelly. Not Carl Connelly, as the promo flyers suggested. Imagine getting a career break to perform 12,000 miles from home as the support for a popular headline star and the lazy marketing people only go and get your name wrong?
Donnelly did a relatable and mostly funny 20-minute
set covering off his Irish heritage, his physical decline into middle age, and turned
his (and his partner’s) struggles with IVF into a series of quips about wanking.
He looks like one to keep an eye on.
No comments:
Post a Comment