Rhys James wonders what it says about his relationship with sincerity that he can’t go two sentences without saying something flippant. But it’s his superpower as a comedian, powering a phenomenal rate of gags in this relentless funny hour of no-frills stand-up.
He machine-guns a broad range of contemporary topics, offering misplaced ideas to fix Britain, tweaking the hide of a few sacred cows such as the venerated money-saving expert Martin Lewis, and expressing grudging admiration for the ‘infinite money loops’ that fleece us.
As he aims for speed and universality, the jokes are not about making nuanced points, but are nonetheless mostly as fresh as they are brutally efficient. These are the skills that stand him in good stead as the regular on every episode of the resurrected Mock The Week. He admits that at least one routine here had its origins on the panel show, but makes the case that good gags bear repetition.
Class proves a rich seam, as is so often in UK comedy. James knows he’s firmly middle-class – though is quick to distance himself from those in the next stratum up, like Ivo Graham. Despite coming from the same financial demographic as the Edinburgh Fringe audience, he directs plenty of jibes at them for their privileged, boomer, M&S-shopping attitudes, helping create a dynamic to-and-fro in the room.
At 35, the comic is prematurely entering his own grumpy old man phase, too – at least when it comes to a resistance to fresh tech breakthroughs given there’s so much we’ve yet to perfect.
For all the relatable frivolity, James does have a personal ordeal to share – an adult circumcision. That provides the pun of the title, which otherwise comes from Romeo And Juliet and means, aptly, ‘arguing with tricky wordplay’.
In keeping with his compulsive glibness, this is not played for sympathy, but to set up gags about his humiliation – especially when he was asked to provide a stool sample for unrelated tests. What happened to that little pot is hilarious, but James ratchets up from the obvious farce by piling on details about the incident and his own angst that shows his skill.
He’s a real engineer, mass-producing robust, frictionless gags and connecting them to a sturdy framework, revealed in skilfully deployed callbacks and the way the rat-a-tat approach of the first half gives way to the extended story of the second.
