Like a lot of comedians these days, Rob Beckett is quick to self-deprecate. Introducing himself as ‘all teeth no gums,’ scoring his first big laugh with a quip about comedy not being a proper job and blaming his working-class upbringing for his doomed attempt to read East of Eden, he’s a humble, unpretentious presence whose excitement to be here is self-evident. The result is an enjoyable hour of simple, classic stand-up, uneven in patches and rough around the edges, but showing definite promise.
Beckett scores early points with his take on the ‘audience banter’ section, as he refers to it. He doesn’t reinvent the wheel but he plays off people very well and it feels like he’s honestly interested in the answers he gets. His scripted material, while always lively, doesn’t impress quite so much. He delivers it well, but there is perhaps an over-reliance on the ‘my family are so quirky’ sub-genre of stand-up comedy that seems to have sprung up in the wake of Russell Howard etc. Most of this is concentrated in the middle of the hour, when the set does threaten to sag a little, but to Beckett’s credit the laughs last night rarely lulled and the near-full house in cramped Pleasance Below were always enjoying themselves.
Beckett’s affable stage persona goes a long way towards helping the audience keep the faith when a punchline doesn’t quite land. An offhand ‘I’ll leave that out of the next one’ allows the laughter to regain momentum, and negates the awkward atmosphere that usually follows a lukewarm joke. He carries off flubbed lines with equal cool, too. At this particular performance, a truly spectacular Spoonerism on the phrase ‘grapes and raisins’ resulted in several minutes of ad-libbed bewilderment that had the audience cackling with delight. In fact this is one of the more frustrating things about Beckett’s show; he feels so much more in control when he’s exploring a little improvised digression or riffing off his audience than when he’s peddling the more hit-and-miss scripted material.
One could argue that Beckett isn’t doing anything new or ground-breaking with stand up, but then again he isn’t trying to. At one point he expressed not-too-serious disdain for some unnamed comedians at the Fringe, who in his view allow their political or intellectual agendas to eclipse their ability to be funny. Beckett is in no danger there. He is as he says, a comedian here to tell jokes, and only the stoniest of souls could object to that. And, as an added bonus from a guy who’d already proved exceptionally likeable, when the show last night was over he proceeded immediately to the door and personally thanked each and every audience member for showing up. Class act.
