Filling the empathy gap is a real laughing matter
EmPaThy. We all need more empathy. Or at least comedian mark Watson feels he does, which is why he’s made it his mission statement to try to be a better man, and endeavour to understand other people’s foibles and perspectives more. Which makes The Infinite Show fit perfectly into the comedy zeitgeist of this year’s Fringe, where peace, love and understanding seem to be the order of the day.
To that end, prior to curtain up Watson has encouraged the audience to fill out cards revealing their anxieties, prejudices, or weird thoughts – a Rorschach test of the inner psyche, which on the night I caught his set included a woman who can’t bear to see fruit anywhere other than in a fruit bowl, and a bloke who firmly believes that the reason he’s unlucky at forming relationships with women is down to the fact that he doesn’t drink coffee or tea.
his usual wired, distracted, fast-paced self here, Watson can’t help running with these declarations and others, in freewheeling, interactive digressions with the crowd. In other comics’ less capable hands this would seem like filler, but in Watson’s it’s an ambience builder.
Not that he doesn’t have set niggles he’d like to get off his chest here, such as why people who claim to be long-sighted are just at it – ‘I can’t see my hand in front of my face but I can see Paris’; how, while he’s flattered to have made it on to a poll of the sexiest Jews on Twitter – ‘I’m not Jewish, I just look like David Baddiel.’
Then there’s the not so small matter of his relationship with his eight year-old son and four-yearold daughter. This, it turns out, is strained at the moment as Watson is going through a messy divorce, a darker edge backdrop to the show that he teases with here, but doesn’t fully scratch.
These and others are the gaps in empathy he feels he has to plug, and his laying them bare here is a comedy treat.
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