Review of the comic's current tour

James Acaster’s been a comedian for 15 years and at the top of his game for a good two-thirds of that. Yet  he’s still pushing himself creatively even though – as he confesses here – he really doesn’t like doing stand-up. He learned that in lockdown, free from the rigmarole of having to do it.

Hecklers Welcome is an attempt to address both those points, by learning to be in the moment a bit more, to go with the flow of the gig, whatever the crowd may throw at him, even if it means deviating from his carefully crafted routines.

By his own admission he’s been bad-tempered and sulky with audiences before, going in hard on the most good-natured of interruptions or railing testily against a room for being quiet and unappreciative when they had – until then – been having a perfectly nice time. Even if that audience were nursery-aged children he was reading a Roald Dahl story to.

Thanks to therapy, he’s come to realise much of this is on him. And because it came from therapy, of course it all stems from childhood. When he was little boy watching any sort of performance he immediately wanted to be part of it – and when he did join it, it usually ended in humiliation. That combination of an ego that’s both huge and fragile defines so many comedians, and was evident at such a young age.

Despite the title, hecklers aren’t so much welcome here as tolerated. Setting out the ground rules at the start, Acaster essentially says he’ll take them in good grace, as well being chill about people wandering to the loo or checking their phones.

They’re a pretty well-behaved lot in Brighton tonight. During the show itself only a few heckles are attempted, and only one is delivered with enough confidence to be heard above the laughs and hubbub of the show, and is subsequently addressed in the same well-intentioned spirit it was intended. For why would anyone want to derail the work of a comedian known for meticulous storytelling, skilfully engineered to build up a bigger picture?

The key story on which all else hangs involves the five-year-old Acaster reduced to tears when taking part in a demonstration in front of his classmates. The therapist has this as the defining incident, with the adult comic always trying to protect that version of himself whenever he’s on stage.

That’s not the only humiliation. The story of him entering a dog show with an uncooperative pet is vivid in its detail, but funnier when we learn just why the sausage-dog came to be named Stephen Minney, and the consequences of that odd decision. 

Even a story about a truly terrible impression of the then Prince Charles for a school talent contest, which is wilfully anticlimactic, has his place. And as an adult, ignominy still stalks him – witness his unconventional approach to the teenage tearaways who terrorise a train carriage he was on.

Funny as these are – exaggerated by Acaster’s ever-indignant retelling and awkward, angular physicality as much as his spry turn of phrase – it’s how these stories piece together into a bigger picture that sets Hecklers Welcome aside. Psychologists will tell us that aggressors are so often scared people lashing out against the world, and that’s what Acaster subtly points towards at every turn. 

For an encore, Acaster properly confronts his nemeses and actively invites the heckles. And in truth, it’s a mess, primarily comprising people shouting out bits of old routines, which doesn’t give him much to work with. Plus the question about Russell Brand could never have provided a funny payoff. Hecklers may be welcome… but only if you’re as sharp as Acaster.

Review date: 27 Sep 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett