Taking aim at offence culture
Ricky Gervais: Humanity Colston Hall, Bristol; touring
It feels as though British stand-up has gone a bit quiet in the past few years, at least compared to its morale-boosting boom period after the credit crunch. Is that partly due to the absence of Ricky Gervais?
Humanity, his fifth live show, is his first new major solo offering this decade – a decade that has seen him plough on with new television projects ( Life’s Too Short, Derek and Special
Correspondents) without garnering the same critical and popular adulation that still surfaces, in a nano-second, around his 2001 debut sitcom The
Office, his acknowledged masterwork. With the recent return of that show’s presiding chronic egotist David Brent in the mockumentary Life on the
Road, we’ve been reminded just why we (well, most of us) were wowed by Gervais in the first place. And
Humanity provides a timely reconfirmation of his rare aptitude as a breeze-shooter: a winning combination of straight-talking pub philosopher, wind-up merchant and incorrigible class clown. He’s insistently casual in black T-shirt and jeans, padding about, swilling beer, his visual luxuries a skull-emblazoned lectern and starry backdrop. And as ever the title is an umbrella under which shelter a host of quips and riffs.
That said, this feels like his most cohesive show to-date, the most consistently funny and most heart-onsleeve. Though very much a social media animal, Humanity finds him lampooning the snowflake sensibilities of those who take offence at the slightest thing.
The starting point for that train of thought is provided by his 2016 Golden Globe Awards jibes at Caitlyn Jenner, and the latter’s involvement in a fatal car crash (“She didn’t do a lot for women drivers”). Cue outrage about his “transphobia” and his taboo mentioning of Jenner’s prerealignment name, Bruce. This storm in a teacup ushers in a faux-awkward re-enactment of Jenner’s first visit to his/her doctor and a mock confession, complete with hilarious miming, of Gervais’ desire to re-align himself in accordance with his chimp DNA.
He’s still into baiting his audience, whether through obnoxious bragging or affected callousness: his flip material on cot-deaths prompts a sharp collective intake of breath. But at 55, is there a new seriousness here? His material about his reasons for not having children climbs from low-lying disgruntlement at being force-shown photos of other people’s kids to a peak of hypothetical ire, directed at the useless ingrate off-spring he imagines his wealth would give rise to.
He begins with observations on the funny-peculiar specialisms of dog breeds and ends with a condemnation of the barbaric cruelty towards canines of the Yulin ‘festival’ in China, an emblem of a nasty age. A lot has happened since his last show, Science – much of it to do with the bleak rise of unreason. I didn’t expect to write this, but it’s good to have him back.