Marcus Brigstocke presents a comic celebration of everything the Tory government has tried to achieve through their initiative of creating a Big Society where we can all just get along. As you can imagine, this is a politically charged piece of theatre and I use the term theatre as opposed to stand-up for good reason. Brigstocke presents much more than a man with a microphone and his hour show is full of character roles, impersonations and acted delights.
He quickly brushed through a script of things it’s not OK to say as, I guess, it wasn’t OK to say them. However, the main bulk of the show was comprised of dividing the audience and giving them roles in his big society: we had the citizens, whom he took great pleasure in taking money from; then we had a chancellor of the exchequer, a dancer from Northern Ireland; we had a Minister for Transport, a civil engineer; and a student in the middle who was poor and had made this all go wrong in the first place.
Brigstocke is a strong improviser who seems to have an arsenal of material pre prepared for every eventuality. Do we have any Scots in? English? Australian? Black people? Jewish people? Gays? Each one of these jokes has been carefully refined for maximum effect.
Whilst his attacks and jokes on other comedians felt unfair they were funny and you cannot fault him for being himself. Brigstocke is a wonderful storyteller; he holds his audience with the right level of intensity for the entire hour and we wait on every word he has to say. A real treat of honesty and humour.
