Review by Jay Richardson

If all comedy had Abie Philbin Bowman’s scope of ambition, then plenty more people might take it seriously as an art form. This might be a pyrrhic victory though. Because as the Irishman, who attracted attention for the satirically daring Jesus: The Guantanamo Years and Eco-Friendly Jihad, contends, in political terms, mocking something doesn’t change it.

That, at least, was the conclusion of his masters thesis. The only exception he found was Stetson Kennedy, a writer and human rights activist who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and tried to leak their inner workings back to the police, government and media. Finding no support for his double agency, he passed the codewords and ritual details to writers of the radio serial Superman, who created a series of adventures in which the Man of Steel took on the Klan. Overnight, the mystique and fear of the organisation was undermined as the KKK found their secrets being shouted by kids playing in the street.

Inspired by this, the provocative Bowman exploited his position as a Galway DJ to interview the KKK’s membership director and public relations man, the Reverend Travis Pierce, on the night of President Obama’s election. Their frosty exchange sent Bowman to a more detailed analysis of the Klan’s website, wherein he finds plenty of contentious dogma on miscegenation, race and sexuality.

For Bowman, whose run of this show at the Hollywood Fringe found him discriminated against, insofar as he wasn’t allowed to say ‘nigger’ as black comics were and he experienced anti-Semitic abuse – intriguing to a gentile who just happens to have a number of stereotypically Jewish characteristics – this is a red rag to a bolshie bull.

With anecdotal evidence and a broad sweep of examples, he explores such notions as the Darwinian impulse to breed inter-racially, the temporary exacerbation of racism in Ireland in the wake of Thierry Henry’s infamous handball, the commodification of sex and the origins of homophobia. A less theatrical offering than his previous shows, he can’t prevent it feeling like a bit of a lecture. But there’s a more direct engagement, he keeps the gag rate impressively high and there are flashes of audacious brilliance.

A right-on, liberal feminist he’s nevertheless keen to portray himself as a regular, horny male too who will do questionable things in the pursuit of sex, including evoking his dead brother or going gay in the appropriate circumstances. His material on bisexuality is never as strongly backed or as forcefully delivered as that on racism, but it’s full of interesting if occasionally gratuitous points.

As he seems to allude to, I’m sure stand-up will never truly satisfy Bowman’s intellectual, activist inclination. But as a summary of his recent thoughts and a forum for him to bounce stimulating ideas off each other, it’s highly watchable.

Review date: 30 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson