‘One of the definitive documents of the trans experience in stand-up’ : Features 2024 : Chortle : The UK Comedy Guide

Tim Harding’s comedy diary

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

One of the nicest parts about Christmas is the way normal commitments start winding down around the middle of December. Whether in school or at the office, you’ll start to notice a febrile laziness creeping in, and the creative kids will invariably take the opportunity to cook up a show. 

I have a soft spot for the kind of productions that appear at this time of year: often loose, slightly boozy festive offerings that only make sense in an end-of-term context.

The best of those on offer this year comes from John Kearns (noted lover of Christmas) and Adam Riches (feelings on Christmas unknown), who have teamed up in character as Alfie Boe and Michael Ball respectively for, a very silly tribute to the twin colossi of cheese. 

 It’s an entertainment institution which they respect tremendously by the way, as is clear from their teasing affectionate portrayal. ‘[They] are to light entertainment what light entertainment is to normal entertainment,’ says Riches, with no small admiration.

It has the feel of an in-joke, a lark with friends, but the craft underpinning it is solid as hell. The duo’s rapport is tight and quippy, almost overwritten if anything, and the imagined dynamic between the smoothly, camply supercilious Ball and the earnest, uncomfortable Boe is wonderfully done, overflowing with great character tics like the way Riches goes ‘awww’ every time a piece of fan mail begins ‘Dear Ball & Bo’”. The details stem beautifully and organically from one another.

By way of another unexpected festive treat, sketch group Sheeps have released their Christmas album A Very Sheeps Christmas, and against all the odds it’s actually brilliant, a timely repository for daft, surprisingly catchy singalongs starring some of the bigger names in alt comedy on vocal duty. 

Daran Johnson, Al Roberts and Liam Williams have smoothly segued their sense of humour from live sketch into a musical format, with song premises like what if Santa did karate? (Christmas Karate) and what if your chimney was stuffed with Santas? (Five Santas). Check out lead single My Baby Looks a Lot Like Santa Claus to get the measure of the project.

The album launch was celebrated with a three night run of live performances at the Moth Club, with a full band featuring Johnny White Really Really shredding on guitar and John Tothill shredding on clarinet, plus guest vocalists including Emma Sidi, Lolly Adefope, and Charlotte Ritchie sounding as haunting as Laura Marling on the soulful Mrs Claus, about soliciting sex while hubby Santa is out on his rounds.

In the live context, only Johnson really has the clarity of voice to make the jokes land as well as the music, but the songs are well-written enough that they work as bops even when it’s Liam Williams on the mic – not the most musical of the trio – growling and shuffling dyspeptically like a missing Gallagher brother. 

They almost sound more like a real band at these moments, performing for the sake of the music rather than the joke. Although you better believe the between-song banter is a lot better than you’ll get with most regular bands.

Earlier in the week, I had a fun time at Olga Koch Comes From Money, although I don’t know if I could say the same for Koch herself. The show is an attempt to reckon with the privilege that she grew up with as the daughter of a senior figure in the Russian government. As usual for Koch is a smart, horny and entertaining hour, although to my mind she falls just short of really grappling with her vulnerabilities surrounding the topic, preferring to lean back on jokes about ‘isn’t this what generic rich people are like?’ rather than ‘I’m rich and this is what I’m like.’

The interesting thing about this particular performance however, was that Koch thought it was going terribly from the very beginning and couldn’t be convinced otherwise, whether through laughter, explicit statements of encouragement or anything else. 

With some comedians, it’s part of the act. Stewart Lee wouldn’t be Stewart Lee if he wasn’t pretending to gripe about how the show was going over, but, generally speaking, Koch Means Confidence ©. 99 per cent of the time she has an inimitable cool girl swagger, so it sticks out a little more in her case when the façade cracks.

This is absolutely no slight on Koch, and is a phenomenon I’ve observed in comics at all levels where the comedian loses confidence in how the show is being received, seemingly oblivious to the feedback that people are enjoying themselves. 

For no obvious reason, the comic might suddenly prang out and ask why nobody’s laughing, but sitting in the audience you can hear laughter all around you. We literally are laughing! You want to say, but how do you communicate that to a performer who doesn’t seem to be able to hear it? You want to take their hand, tell them they’re doing great, and sometimes audience members might even try that, but the divide for some reason is impossible to bridge. 

This is certainly not brought up as an attempt to shame either performer or audience and bears no relation to the quality of any given show; it just feels like there should be a word for it, like how gymnasts sometimes get the yips. These things happen; at this stage all we can say is that it needs more research.

Finally, I wanted to mention that Sam Nicoresti has uploaded their special Wokeflake to watch for free on YouTube. This is the final version of an hour that I’ve seen in four different iterations.

It deals directly and openly with Nicoresti coming out as trans, first to themself and then to the wider world, and wrestles explicitly with the attempts of the right to suppress trans rights and voices, through use of a theatrical technique where Nicoresti periodically takes on the character of a ‘gender-critical’ male podcaster.

This show was slept on a little when it hit Edinburgh, perhaps partly because it continued to change and evolve long after its official debut, reflecting Nicoresti’s developing identity. 

Here, in its final form, it marries incisive political commentary with mystical revelation, showing how the comic realised they were trans following a cryptic dream, which directors Sian Docksey and Benjamin Sutton have staged imaginatively with lo-fi Jane Schoenbrun style visual effects.

James Acaster gets all the memes and Jordan Gray scooped the award nominations, but (with the disclaimer that it’s not really for me to say, of course) in years to come I think it will be Wokeflake that stands the test of time as one of the definitive documents of the trans experience in stand-up. 

Nicoresti does such an extraordinary job of representing transition, discomfort and desire in language, vehemently performative while making a case for the importance of performance in gender identity, and advocating for the need to embrace questioning and transcend the rational when thinking about how we listen to ourselves and the existence of the soul.

It’s both inspiring and relentlessly twisty in its use of language, full of knotty little one-liners and multi-levelled jokes. We’re very lucky to have it preserved in this format – a show that I know for a fact has changed lives already, and will continue to do so.

Published: 20 Dec 2024