With relations between the US, UK and Europe realigning every day just now, Derek Mitchell’s debut stand-up hour feels a bit on the nose, even if the beginning of its run preceded the recent ramping up of anti-immigrant rhetoric from various Western governments.
As Mitchell suggests in this bold, identity insecurity show, as a white immigrant, he’s in a privileged position of being able to be philosophical about the whole business, his unease at going through airport security brought on by the building’s oppressive architecture, rather than any real persecution.
That said, as an American who has been splitting their time between England and the Netherlands over the last decade, who has a Dutch husband and substantial following online for their Let’s Double Dutch sketches, Mitchell has calibrated his eye for those most middle-class of micro-aggressions underpinning social interaction in each of the three nations.
The show opens as a superficial but enjoyable primer on Dutch mores and manners for those less familiar with Holland’s “branding”, at least relative to the likes of France, Italy and Germany. First and foremost, it’s a chance for the puckishly expressive comedian to indulge in guttural, throaty expression of the Dutch achschent. Yet it expands into a more ambitious exploration of the immigrant’s insider-outsider perspective, about never fully fitting in anywhere, being always just a little on edge.
Mitchell’s observations on Dutch bluntness and their peculiar propensity to deliver their heaviest insults with heinous medical diagnoses are extremely funny and clearly strike a chord with the smattering of Dutch people in the room. And he similarly nails the seething anger and resentment lurking beneath so much English self-deprecation and inhibition.
His act out of an English person refusing a cup of tea that they desperately crave, for instance, is inflatedly broad and simmeringly, melodramatically camp. Yet it undeniably captures something about the national character.
He offers less on Americans, beyond an admittedly highly illustrative account of his former Boy Scout master’s reverence for the US flag. And the deluded fantasy of frustrated Midwest mother and wife intuiting in him a Bohemian, European toyboy escape. She may have been barking up the wrong tree in several respects. But absolutely not in his attraction to overdramatic, middle-aged women seeking to emotionally offload.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding a few sketchy allusions to a post-Empire, post-Brexit England making some of the right noises about self-improving but not putting in the work, and a bit of historical background about the phrase “Double Dutch”, Mitchell isn’t greatly interested in the macro clashes of cultures, preferring to focus on the internal discomfort and anxiety they inspire in him and those he meets.
His husband remains a conspicuously absent figure, hardly mentioned. But the intersectional interplay of Mitchell’s nationality with his gender, sexuality and, to a degree, race, privilege and class, is compelling.
Regrettably, as his identity portrait becomes more nuanced and fully rounded, to the extent of absorbing the sexual psychodrama of frustrated older women, the narrative becomes less focused and more baggy, the laughs diminishing as Mitchell leans less on relatable observations and more on his clownish physicality and command of the stage.
For there’s little doubt that it’s his charisma and acuity in appreciating the ideal facial expression or jerk of his limber frame to emphasise punchlines that is his trump card. These elevate a show that feels like its pulling in too many directions simultaneously and lacking in satisfying resolutions, while seldom entirely successfully melding stand-up with the comically outré sketches that have made his name. His energy and stagecraft is a draw though, and you look forward to seeing what direction he goes in next.
Tours until 13 June 2025 | Image: Contributed
