Never mind the pandemic, there’s baby yoga to laugh at
Kevin Bridges Eventim Apollo, London Touring until Thursday HHHHH
There’s a tendency among comics still suffering from lockdown PTSD to harp on and on about Covid. Understandable to an extent since for almost two years, deprived of performing, all they could do was endlessly buff up routines about the pandemic. But… time to let it go!
Happily, Kevin Bridges swerves this tedious trend, expertly judging when to move on. After a couple of laser-accurate pandemic gags, he signs off with ‘Covid’s now gone back to China after a successful world tour’.
Bridges is not one to hang around. Anecdote. Punchline. Laugh. Next.
He flits from topic to topic with verve and aplomb, occasionally pausing to joust with the numbskulls who shout out inaudible encouragement or to berate phone-waving idiots bent on filming him.
The 90-minute set is as taut as the tightrope of cynicism he walks, wobbling towards but never teetering into offence.
The Glaswegian did flirt with being cancelled, performing a show on the night of the
Queen’s death which contained a mildly risqué remark about her passing. ‘It got a big laugh on the night, but then it went to Twitter VAR and the joke got disallowed!’
He dips in and out of politics (‘In Scotland we’re calling for a referendum to see if England should be allowed to remain in the UK’) but it’s the personal material that hits home.
From gags about the ‘middleclass radicalisation’ of his young son being taken to baby yoga, to a section on mental health, Bridges combines astute observation with the lightest of touches, topped off with a cheery dollop of charisma.
Despite being a proud Scot, he’s happy to have a pop at his homeland, which, he says, is boycotting the Qatar World Cup, ‘just as we’ve been boycotting World Cups for the past 24 years’. Yet another instance of Bridges hitting the back of the net again and again.