A surreal maestro at top of his game
James Acaster (Reset) Fifth time lucky
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. or another case of always the bridesmaid, never the bride? that’s the conundrum facing Kettering comic James Acaster, as he attempts to shake off his nearly man tag when it comes to walking away with edinburgh’s top comedy gong.
Acaster has been nominated a record four times for the edinburgh Comedy Award. And if he doesn’t finally manage to crack it this year? Well, his career has been steadily heading in one direction only, and I doubt he’ll lose much sleep over it when his inevitable stardom is fully cemented in the broader public’s consciousness.
At least this evening’s audience is on his side. or rather he’s on ours. ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ he says.
‘I was so hoping it would be you. And you’re here. And in exactly the same order I imagined you would be,’ he says in the best bit of audience schmoozing I’ve seen at the Fringe. From there on in he confesses to being in a witness protection scheme after becoming involved in a supermarket scam involving honey as a loss leader (though his anonymity is surely seriously compromised by telling a sell-out crowd).
this, he declares, has allowed him to start over again. Albeit in Loughborough as a lollipop man. And turning back the clock, and starting over is what Reset is really all about, and the framework that allows him to veer off into his strong suit of observational comedy pinpointing the minutiae of modern living, and the surreality of the everyday.
Acaster can turn your worldview on its head in ways most comics can only dream of.
Witness the Beckettian hell of him trying to buy a supermarket conveyor belt divider: ‘So began the longest day of my life.’ the eU referendum is also cleverly distilled into an analogy about whether to leave the teabag in or out the cup, with post-Brexit exemplified by tourists pretending to hold up the leaning tower of Pisa in photos, while screaming ‘spag bol’.
A satirical sideswipe at British colonial plunder, where ‘the whole of Britain set sail in a boat and robbed everything in the world’, then had the cheek to display everything in full view in museums so they could come and look at it, is pure genius.
Add into the mix, riffs on Kenya, museum rubbers, and a brief biog and the end result is an exquisitely written show, delivered by a charismatic performer at the top of his game. Not to be missed. Pleasance Courtyard, until Aug 29