“Are you ready for some adequate comedy?” Brett Goldstein asks whilst doing his own intro to this work-in-progress show. We were, but thankfully we got a much better deal than that - the hour that follows being well crafted, acutely observed and marvellously funny.
This show is lacking that perfectly crafted incorporation of narrative arc which means you’re emotionally engaged as well as laughing incessantly
Although there is no particular theme to this show, its parts are wonderful - from 12 Years a Slave as a date movie, Kevin Bacon’s recent EE adverts (Brett maintains not to know what an EE is), the admission to having taken up comedy as an excuse to get out of dinner parties, and sympathy for the poor Yewtree getting such a bad press from the Operation of the same name - Brett Goldstein makes you laugh at things you never noticed, and has an instant natural likeability that puts you at ease and often in mind of that favourite funny friend we all have that we could listen to all night. In amongst this are some beautiful analogies - comparing taking your first ecstasy with the removal of Achilles’ veil in the Iliad, and the disappointment of real ‘after-after-after parties’ which are nothing like the rap videos. He also manages to draw almost as many laughs from laughing at himself doing a 5pm stand-up show as from his material.
Brett’s previous shows, Brett Goldstein Grew Up In A Strip Club and Contains Scenes of an Adult Nature were both strongly themed around his father, and this show is lacking that perfectly crafted incorporation of narrative arc which means you’re emotionally engaged as well as laughing incessantly. But this is a work-in-progress show, and there’s the beginning of a theme emerging around his mother - her disappointment that he’s not Jack Whitehall, and the kind of comedy that he can’t do with her around, such as a brilliant piece about why he’s had to give up porn for feminist reasons. If these threads get woven into the show with the kind of affection and subtlety of his previous two, there’s no doubt the full hour will be just as good - ‘adequate’ will not even come close.
