Review by Julia Chamberlain

There’s a lot of confessional, autobiographical comedy about and self deprecation is its principal currency. Larkin is as open and vulnerable as a cut-price Alan Bennett, but not yet in the same league for wit.,

Addressing matters of body image and attractiveness, how we score ourselves and others, his crushing lack of self-esteem and the inverse trajectory of his life (from a stockbroker with the accoutrements of success, to a comic with sweet FA) this is poignantly honest, but quite uncomfortable.

It was admittedly an off day, it had to be when in the course of the show he says three times, ‘That normally gets a bigger laugh’, but it does seem hard to believe. There’s a lot about his low status, based on his looks, a cuddly loser, a likeable rapist, looking 30 per cent Down’s syndrome and gurning away to show off his powerlifter arms and phenomenal bad luck in work.

He does make a couple of good points about not labelling people, we are either ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ and he considers his life now to be a happy one, despite the reduction of his circumstances, comedy is its own enrichment.

With a more responsive crowd this might bounce along a bit more, but the funny was well hidden, and his shtick of ‘saying aloud what we might all think but were too polite to make explicit’ created, rather than released, tension.

Review date: 15 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain