Review of Peter Serafinowicz's hapless businessman now on stage

‘Every failure is a lesson learned,’ is Brian Butterfield’s watchword. Then he adds: ‘And I’ve learned more than 1,400 lessons.’

But while success is normally not a concept associated with the serial entrepreneur, this show – sorry, ‘business seminar’ – is just that: a triumphant transfer of a sketch character into a hilarious stage juggernaut.

The character was the stand-out from the short-lived Peter Serafinowicz Show, but his cult fan base has not only endured but grown in the intervening years, as the original sketches keep circulating online. The hapless salesman fits right in among the dodgy get-rich-quick schemes that proliferate across social media – and proves an antidote to those fetishise capitalist success.

On stage, he’s greeted like a pop star – a quick montage of the original skits remind us how wonderfully funny his misjudged ideas are, from his take on Poundland to the surreal dishes allowed on the cheat day in the Butterfield diet plan – and merchandise flies off the trestle table after the show.

His tips to get ahead in business are just as daftly ill-fated as his products. His philosophy is all based on the easy-to-remember five Bs. And if only one of them begins with the letter B, that’s because you haven’t been using his aide-memoire that’s so convoluted it needs its own, even more labyrinthine, mnemonic to work.

Of course, the whole presentation is on the cheap, starting from with the Windows 94 startup screen that launches the PowerPoint. Sound and light problems are entirely the venue’s, mind – though maybe the kit came from  Butterfield Theatrical Supplies – and a few of of his gruffly hoarse bon mots are lost into the ether. 

Still, such scrappiness is very much part of the brand, and Butterfield’s deadpan delivery and mad mispronunciations are all part of the appeal. Even more so is the nature of character himself, for there’s something admirable about someone who launches failed venture after failed venture yet remains steadfast in his belief that the next idea will be the big one. Everyone loves a loser, and a battler.

This eternal optimist is no grasping Apprentice-style cliché putting commercial success above all else. Nor are his failures at anyone’s expense but his own… even if the testimonials for his work are actually a series of complaints about his ineptitude.

Not that comedy fans will have anything to gripe about here. Serafinowicz has packed the show with gags, from those absurdist flourishes in his products to straight-up puns and bonkers non sequiturs, many of which are brilliant in their inspiration.

He performs in a hefty fatsuit that must be murder under the lights, a couple of well-paced fans notwithstanding, so no wonder a couple of skits – including making a big fuss of a comfort break for the toilet – happen offstage. It’s quite a bold move to mess with the seminar format for such a digression, but it works.

Although he’s known more for work on screen than on stage, Serafinowicz gamely gets audience members up on stage for a couple of extended interactive segments, too. These are a little more sticky than the scripted sketches, but add texture to the night, avoiding any risk of this becoming a one-gag show. And fair play to the people of East London, there were some inventive ideas submitted to Butterfield’s knock-off version of Dragon’s Den.

His big ending sees him trying to take on Elon Musk at his own game in a hugely contrived and heavily signposted climax. But the audience are so on board with his conceit that they would forgive him anything. Even so a wonderfully underplayed tag line says so much about the low-rent expectations of this permanent failure. And a karaoke encore is suitably joyous and silly, and could have gone on for longer… but he’s got merch to sell.

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Review date: 25 Sep 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Earth