Brighton Fringe comedy review

Midlife crises come early these days.  Jacob Hatton had his at his 32nd birthday party, at least according to the loose premise of this show.

It is an event where he contemplates what he and his lifelong pals have become. Where once they would have passed around drugs, now it’s gourmet dips – although longstanding nicknames prove harder to shake than recreational narcotics. Meanwhile, he faces a reckoning about his career – enforced after losing his corporate job – and whether he should have children.

Though some of this is specific to him, it’s all relatable stuff for anyone questioning the trappings of adulthood - or who’s simply been let down by vegan cheese or clickbait.

Hatton’s a strong comedy technician. He starts with a quick volley of tight gags to assure us we’re in safe hands, and his routines have an urgent cadence that drives them forward, rather than being general chit-chat. It’s an insistent, high-power delivery, just the right side of hectoring.

He cannot disguise the fact that he’s a posh white bloke – from ‘one of the roughest grammar schools in Kent’ he claims in a bid for hood appeal – and sometimes the assumed confidence that background has instilled gives him the conviction to get him over some patchier material. But he also has proper gags and a good eye for the comic potential in the situations he describes.

Sharing a background with those at the top of society gives him the first-hand insight that they are all as moronic as the rest of us – should that be needed – though he’s also got less elevated family members, such as relatives still living in Ukraine, to keep him grounded. 

The job he lost was in recruitment consultancy – a non-career for the middle classes that seems like some sort of Ponzi scheme the way he describes it, and which gives him some good insight on office life versus working from home.

Other material is very specific – a complaint about So Solid Crew’s 21 Seconds, for example, seems petty without highlighting that pettiness  – while others, such as his confessions about being cultural philistine abroad, could probably be expanded. 

There’s an occasional flight of fantasy that doesn’t sit quite so well with his more straightforward observational stand-up, while he often seems to forget about the framing device of the party, only to bring it back rather abruptly.  

In the crowded field of relatively privileged thirtysomething comedians, Hatton hasn’t quite got his USP down, but as a useful writer and in-control performer, he’s well on his way.

Review date: 13 May 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton The Windmill