Review of comic's show about an AI stand-up bot

American comedian and YouTuber Conner O’Malley has produced something of a Trojan Horse with Research and Development Comedy, a parody about a tech innovator who has developed the perfect algorithm-driven comedian.

Strong ideas about the ethics and purpose of AI – and some enjoyably dumb character work – are concealed inside a flimsy persona and some tired routines. Ultimately, O’Malley’s commitment to injecting stupidity into the over-mined premise is enough to tip the show over the line, but his execution remains buggy.

We are introduced to  the chatbot comedian K.E.N.N. via an over-hyped tech keynote. As expected, he is the hackiest hack, asking what’s the deal with self-service checkout machines, doing Yoda impressions, asking if anyone here’s on the dating apps and boasting of smoking ‘hella weed’.

This most basic anti-comedy gets big laughs from many quarters of the large and  appreciative audience – presumably his YouTube fans – that seems keen to show how smart they are at getting the satire. But there’s nothing new about mocking this sort of bland comedy – some might even argue it’s hack itself. Comics were doing it long before the art of stand-up was endlessly dissected on countless podcasts.  He’s mocking the sort of comedy people who don’t know much comedy might like, with anti-comedy that the sort of people who don’t know much about anti-comedy might like.

Via some unfathomable references to the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank  – the US version of Dragons’ Den – that are lost on Brits, the presentation then takes a step back so we can get to know the ‘real’ Richard Eagleton, the man behind Stand Up Solutions.

Turns out he’s a first-draft Alan Partridge, a dull, unselfaware suburbanite, but with none of the complexity or overwhelming pettiness of Steve Coogan’s alter-ego. Eagleton talks at length about the specs of his Rav4, cosplays with the military reserve and boasts about his happy family life that – to no one’s surprise – turns out not to be quite so idyllic. This is mixed, with patchy success, with surreally tall tales about his background in smalltown Des Plaines, Illinois. 

Just when the show feels like collapsing under the dullness of O’Malley’s alter-ego, he turns things around, at least partially, with some stupidly absurd insights into his diet and fitness regimen and ‘accidentally’ revealing worrying – and occasionally X-rated – insights into his private passions as he explains his invention.

As the idiocy comes to the fore, he also gets some great laughs from crowd work, largely – and ironically – by him not getting the audience’s references, from Huel to Bovril. And the barbs about artificial intelligence, pop culture and politics become all the more barbed.

The revelation of the cockeyed motives that drove him to create the AI comedian are a neat enough conclusion, if not entirely surprising, although the guided meditation that follows a dull coda for a show that – at more than 80 minutes – is already too long. O’Malley’s put a lot of ideas into this, and some skits are undoubtedly funny, but many aren’t, and the transition from web sketch to full-length show proves only a limited success.

• Conner O’Malley: Research and Development Comedy is at Soho Theatre at 9pm until Saturday. He is also bringing the show to Glasgow Stand on July 24, The Limelight in Belfast on July 26. 

Published: 12 Jul 2023