Andrew Maxwell likes to laugh. His punchlines are often footnoted by a demonic, high-pitched chuckle that rumbles around the room and at one point he even introduces a section by telling the audience that he hopes they enjoy it, because ‘it really made me giggle’. It is surprising then that this buoyant persona is matched by a real streak of misanthropy in all directions. Though wry sarcasm may be the default standpoint of many comedians, with Maxwell there is a complex interplay between his negative gloom and the thrill of being able to laugh at it.
It is this persona that Maxwell brings to bear on a series of cultural observations, mixed with surprisingly unguarded political opinions. He takes down a member of the audience’s faith in the Scottish National Party and uses another audience’s member’s enthusiasm for the Jubilee to cast a cloud of doubt over any rose-tinted view of the royals. Yet from this seemingly aggressive outlook, he will deploy a razor sharp gag, smile giddily and plough on. However, it can sometimes feel as though he’s spreading himself too thin. The best moment of the show comes when a riff about bible-bashing rednecks rejecting a ‘hippy’ Jesus turns into an imagining of how Jesus himself would last in a Mexican jail. Here, Maxwell steps out of a one-track mindset of social observation to put his skills to more inventive flights of fancy – still grounded in his political views but used to create something other than the real world.
That said, over the course of the hour Maxwell shows impressive ingenuity to keep his particular brand of ire entertaining and satisfying – his bantering with the audience shows the skill and confidence of his technique and he possesses an impressive knack for characterisation by launching into an array of caricatured accents. His combination of crowd-pleasing and idiosyncrasy is to be applauded in this show but the question is, where will his spirit take him next?
