What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever brought up on a date? For Bobby Sheehan, it seems, it’s a fascination with the sex lives of the American Presidents. Sheehan’s hour-long stand-up set promised a late-night romp through the United States history, but I was left wondering if the premise could have been taken in a stronger direction.
Where the Presidents' sex lives invited absurdity, Sheehan prioritises a sense of ‘edge’
Sheehan did well to warm up the largely un-American crowd to the idiosyncrasies of its dead leaders' sex lives, and the show's coverage of both their sexual and historical content ensured the show never strayed too far from its title. The audience interaction and games were the highlight of the show and earned Sheehan some sizeable, although at times predictable, laughs, and it was here where his playful energy and spontaneity shone through.
However, the set's progression lacked cohesion, and its material occasionally veered towards the uncomfortable. Whilst perfect pacing and chronology wasn't expected from a show crowning Nancy Reagan America’s ‘throat goat’, much of Sheehan’s content felt like vaguely risqué ‘fun facts’ dropped into the lap of the audience without much expansion. The show’s potential climax arrived about three-quarters in, when I was genuinely impressed by Sheehan’s ability to memorise a sizeable portion of a speech by Lincoln, but this resulted in the remainder of the show falling flat in comparison. From the litany of stereotypical gay jokes, to the unexpectedly pointed racial humour in a show centering some of American history’s most prominent overseers of slavery, where the Presidents' sex lives invited absurdity, Sheehan prioritised a sense of ‘edge’.
The show did, in all fairness, live up to its name. However, whilst my crossing of the threshold of the Laughing Horse was, I’m sure, slightly short of that of Washington upon the Delaware, as the show progressed, I couldn’t help but feel a little more like sleepy Joe.
