So what exactly IS the Trouble with Scott Capurro? Is it that this left-leaning liberal American (yes, he's the one, apparently) seemingly talks without pausing for breath? ("Are you keeping up or is this too fast?") Is it because his alleged raison d'être is using the blackest humour to "make the unpalatable, palatable"? Is it his glee when audience members walk out—which he achieves within ten minutes, on the night of this review?.
Capurro is one of nature's sharpest raconteurs.
Or is it that, despite engaging with nigh on every single remaining person in the room during the course of his wide-ranging monologue (some might use the adjective "rambling," but it's so smoothly done it feels like there's a route map somewhere), there was disappointment when the one person he doesn’t attempt to interact with in any way – that's me, by the way – happens to be a reviewer? Certainly he would know that someone from Broadway Baby was in the audience that evening; was I really that obvious, sitting in the third row, writing in my notebook without looking down?
It may, of course, be that he got his fill of material from the rest; there is only so much material even he can fit into under an hour and the one thing you can definitely say about a Scott Capurro set is that he does cover quite a lot of subjects, even if some are lightning-fast asides before he swoops back to the main subject of the moment, which in this case was either his "big, black" Mexican boyfriend, his step-mother, or the Brighton gig where he ended up being half-strangled by an outraged audience member.
Capurro is one of nature's sharpest raconteurs, yet there was a sense the night of this review that he wasn't firing on full cylinders; either that, or perhaps it’s just the wearisome consequences of marriage beginning to wear him down. Even that kind of Capurro, though, is still head, shoulders and a significant amount of upper torso above the competition—as he glances at us, daring us to be outraged. Some trouble is definitely worth it.
