Ray Nielsen on why the recording of his Revelations special at the Dominion Theatre was so groundbreaking

The Dominion Theatre, sitting with imperial confidence at the top of Tottenham Court Road in Central London, has always felt faintly offended by comedy. 

Built in 1929 for spectacle – for musicals, cinema, and the sort of velvet-heavy grandeur that assumes applause will arrive on cue – it is not a venue that naturally invites hecklers or awkward pauses¹.

Comedy, traditionally, prefers a lower ceiling. It likes intimacy, the sense that the comic might have to help stack chairs after the show. The Dominion, by contrast, could host a small rebellion without disturbing its art-deco composure. And yet, in the early 1990s, that was exactly what happened when stand-up — angry, philosophical, unruly stand-up — marched onto its stage.

The most famous of these incursions came courtesy of Bill Hicks, who recorded what would become Revelations at the Dominion in November 1992. This was not comedy as light entertainment. This was comedy as confrontation.

Hicks was never a natural fit for arenas, and that’s precisely why the Dominion recording still vibrates with tension. He stood alone on a stage built for chorus lines and spectacle, delivering routines that interrogated consumerism, politics, religion, censorship, and the quiet terror of watching television.

Broadcast the following year on Channel 4, Revelations captured Hicks at full strength: controlled fury, razor logic, and jokes that landed like arguments. The laughter was real, but so was the unease. A crowd of over two thousand — far larger than the rooms he usually preferred — sat rapt as he dismantled the idea that comedy should merely reassure.

There’s something uniquely British about the way that audience receives him. London crowds have always liked their American prophets slightly cross, slightly disappointed. Hicks, sensing this, leans into it. He lectures, berates, charms, then dares them to follow him further. That the Dominion — a venue more accustomed to polite standing ovations — absorbed this without flinching remains one of the great minor miracles of British comedy history.

It represents the moment when stand-up proved it could scale up without diluting itself — that ideas, not just punchlines, could fill a theatre of that size.

Occasionally, comedy has returned there in the form of one-off events, benefit shows, or crossover performances involving big names from the circuit. These nights always feel faintly transgressive, as though laughter has slipped in wearing borrowed evening wear.

What Hicks demonstrated, more clearly than anyone before or since, is that comedy could command the same physical and cultural space as serious theatre — without pretending to be respectable. He didn’t adapt to the room. He made the room adapt to him.

The Dominion Theatre remains an unlikely landmark in comedy history precisely because it didn’t change to accommodate stand-up. Instead, stand-up changed expectations of what could happen there. When people still talk about Revelations, they’re not just remembering a great set; they’re remembering a moment when comedy claimed a bigger voice.

That’s the legacy. Not that comedy conquered the West End — but that, for one furious, hilarious night, it stood in the centre of it and told the truth at volume.

• The title image is from the 2010 documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story, available from Amazon.

Published: 29 Dec 2025