Tim Harding on Mr Swallow, Alexander Bennett and Todd Barry

Reviewer Tim Harding gives a rundown of the comedy he's been watching in London - in the last two weeks.

The recent announcement that Nick Mohammed would be among the surprisingly star-studded cast of Celebrity Traitors is just another stepping stone for a man who seems destined for national treasuredom.  He should be good at the game as well – to win, you have to be smart, but if you seem too smart, then you’ll get voted off by frightened and superstitious villagers. 

This combination of traits is exactly what Mohammed does so well: in character as Mr Swallow he’s daffy, flappable and accident-prone, but these qualities sit comfortably alongside the fact that he simultaneously plays a mentalist of extraordinary intellectual powers. Few other comedians could pull off this balancing act, and perhaps all the more impressive that he’s doing it in Richmond, in front of an audience who know him as another person altogether – Nathan from Ted Lasso.

His new tour Show Pony is unequivocally his best show yet, an expansively puckish and generous night out that functions as a showcase for the many disparate elements that make up Mr Swallow. 

Mohammed has always engaged with the real world with a certain reluctance. On the odd occasion that he brings up issues of race or other aspects of his personal life, it’s usually with some kind of harrumph that he has to emerge from his land of nonsense and reckon with these things at all. 

I’ve seen his work when he loses himself in silliness (A Christmas Carol(ish)) and I've seen it when he engages (this show), and the latter is definitely better. Here, he approaches it side-on, satirising the idea that comedians of colour should be in any way defined or limited in their creative expression by their race, acting out the conflict in a complex role-play with a BBC commissioning editor represented by his own lily-white foot.

As regards his personal life, he delves deep into the past to summon the spirit of his old English teacher, supposedly the inspiration behind Mr Swallow although I believe several of the stated facts conflict with other stated facts on podcasts etc. 

Fact or fiction, these are the best bits of the show, incorporating some lovely observational material about his school, teachers and classmates, and probably the greatest slapstick gag I’ve seen in many, many years, which hits like a freight train despite comprehensive foreshadowing. Again, he resents the assumption that comedy should be soul-bearing in any way, but he’s found a way to make it work for him.

This playing with expectations of what his comedy should entail – rejecting them, satirising them and embracing them all at once – is apropos for a performer used to pulling off magic tricks. It’s a complex approach underlying a fizzy and at times deliriously funny collection of ideas.

Rather less fizzy, in fact more like a tall draught of cold bitter, Alexander Bennett took his 2024 show Emotional Daredevil for a belated London outing at the Bill Murray. 

Almost the opposite of Mohammed’s ethos in many ways, this is a show that lives on the baring of souls – Bennett’s, yours, whoever else is around at the time – while deprioritising straightforward laughs and entertainment.

Easing in with some traditional stuff about being taken on a birthday prosecco bus tour by his Mum, and performing a disastrous set in front of a dying horse at Royal Ascot, Bennett reveals his hand gradually: this is a show about taking risks. For him, that means doing things he’s not comfortable with – singing on stage, not going for the easy laugh, and talking about aspects of his private life including his sexuality, domestic abuse and PTSD.

But he wants the audience to take risks too, which manifests in some unusually emotionally intense moments of audience participation, the specifics of which I can’t reveal. Behind the scenes, and at times on stage, Bennett is taking his safeguarding responsibilities seriously, making sure that participants are as comfortable as possible about answering his probing questions. 

Whether it’s enough, I couldn’t say. It can be difficult, as an audience participant, if you’re not used to the spotlight. Once chosen and put on stage in front of a crowd, there can be pressure to perform and act in ways that you wouldn’t normally do. 

I’m confident that Bennett is doing the most he can to safeguard their interests in the limited window he has access to them. What’s less clear is whether it’s worth it, or the effect it might have on the non-participating sections of the audience. 

Whichever angle you’re looking at this room from, it can be uncomfortable at times, and there aren’t a lot of big laughs to break the tension.

I admire the big swing, and the lengths he’s gone to in order to keep the show visually stimulating and varied. I’ll never complain about people pushing at the boundaries of comedy, but this show needed to be funnier and more decisive to bear the weight of its own conceit.

Finally, also at the Bill Murray, it’s time once again to be mildly underwhelmed by an American stand-up legend. Todd Barry is probably best known for being the standard-bearer of crowdwork on the US circuit, making it a big feature of his act before Instagram brought it to the masses. In fact, his most celebrated tour/DVD was composed of crowdwork alone.

Like many American acts, he’s also had dozens of bit-part roles in sitcoms and unsuccessful comedy movies – roles that he wryly makes light of in this new untitled show, sardonically insisting on his own celebrity. The effect is confusing because, on one level, to provincial UK comedy heads, he’s unironically kind of a big deal, but on the other hand you can’t help but notice that the Bill Murray is a pretty small venue.

Visually one of the more nondescript men to ever live, Barry’s whole shtick is that he’s very quiet, and very calm, positively soporific at times, although there’s a surprising under-the-breath gritted-teeth intensity that keeps you from drifting off altogether. 

He’s calm in the same way Clint Eastwood is calm, confident in his ability to narrow his eyes and deal with anything that comes his way, which in this set is mostly minor annoyances like queuing for corn and leaving his sponge bag at a hotel.

His vaunted crowdwork is, I would argue, of medium quality. He’s no Katherine Ryan that’s for sure, and finds the same dead ends as any other comic when he comes across an audience member who works in accounts. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with his act at all: the craft is rock solid. You don’t come to him for fireworks, and he provides none, of which he’s well aware. I’d hope that to gain his degree of renown you’d need a bit more than solid craft and staying power, though. A bit of a legend by default, I fear

Published: 26 May 2025