Passionately political but whimsically daft, thoughtful and with an esoteric breadth of learning yet engaging and accessible, Andrew O’Neill’s latest show is impressively wide-ranging and delightfully varied but has a strong central message.
A non-binary, vegan, anarchist and metaller who practices ritualised magick, plays the electric guitar and beats a drum, both for their radical views and Whitney Houston’s creative peak, O’Neill’s identity contains multitudes.
There are shades of Harry Hill in the rhythms and silliness of the wrong-footing non-sequiturs with which they open both halves of this show. And Eddie Izzard in their surreal blur of the legendary and everyday, the inspired and mundane in their act out dialogues.
Stewart Lee-style, O’Neill mutters about elements of the show they’re not entirely happy with, the deconstruction of one routine while seated amongst the audience becoming the bit itself, or at least its get out.
Meanwhile, a quote from their friend, the late hell-raising stand-up Ian Cognito is one of O’Neill’s philosophical guiding principles, a refrain to ensure their humility and openness, so that, despite their most strongly held convictions, they’re prepared to moderate them with fresh evidence. Somewhat bizarrely, it transpires, it was Donald Trump who dragged them back from the lure of conspiracy theories and despair, reaffirming some of their faith in democracy.
Yet while they have a lovely, goofy routine about Dracula’s supposedly improvised quips, O’Neill underpins this show with more specialised folklore. Taking its title from the warlike aspects of the mystic Jewish sect of the Kabbalah, then evoking Mars, Thor and more, the comic wants to smash capitalism, overthrow the aristocracy and ultimately, kill the King, albeit in a musically presented, almost slapstick scenario.
Offering historical context for the industrial military complex, its connections with the patriarchy and capitalism through billionaire Soviet kleptocrats hollowing out London’s liveable housing stock, a throughline emerges whereby O’Neill rails against all forms of landlordism with determined steeliness.
The agitprop is well earned too, both carefully seeded but also surrounded by some inspired nonsense.
Like Lee again, O’Neill confesses to using cultural references that they have only the most passing familiarity with, mocking their own fogeyness, even as elsewhere they subscribe to the most progressive, countercultural ideals, their gender representation an affront to blokeish, opinionated blowhards.
However, seemingly dufferish, throwaway observational gags about the Netflix gameshow Is It Cake? set up some hallucinatory existential angst and an exquisite bit of audience emotional manipulation, while also managing to reflect on the strides made by gay rights over the last few decades, as well as affording fleeting insight into O’Neill’s relationship with their family.
Running the gamut from acute social commentary to applaudably contrived puns, O’Neill weaves a compelling spell of disparate elements with Geburah, ultimately conducting the audience through a ritualised invocation of bloodletting that feels both an apt conclusion and surprisingly optimistic.
Continues touring | Image: Contributed
The Reviews Hub Score
Playful, revolutionary performance
