Writer: Olly Hawes
Olly Hawes opens his show with unapologetic gusto, declaring that the evening of storytelling that will follow is written by a straight white man and about a straight white man, yelling in self-congratulatory victory before he’s even got going. It’s a self-aware and amusing start that promises bullish laughs (delivered) and a fun show (somewhat lacking).
The comedy comes fast and easy early on – Hawes quickly builds a relatable on-stage persona that is painfully aware of all the troubles in the world (racism, sexism and climate change, to name just a few) and yet barely able to achieve simple aims such as living beyond a constant need for self-gratification or picking out a pair of socks in the morning.
Hawes is self-aware throughout, at pains to spell out the hypocrisies of every character in his tale while also frequently turning to the audience to break the pace of his own narrative to tell self-aware meta jokes; Hawes spends a significant amount of time breaking out of his increasingly thin narratives to comment upon events as he’s telling them. It’s initially amusing, but the cheap laughs decidedly work against the stories themselves. How is an audience meant to take the meat of the story seriously if the performer telling them is constantly treating them as disposable?
For a comedy, this wouldn’t be a problem, but as the show rolls on, it’s clear that Hawes is at pains to deliver a serious message about…something. Affairs take a hard turn as things cut suddenly from tales of lads on stag dos to a dystopian future in which all the fears for the future Hawes’ character previously worried over have come true, with the world morphed into an authoritarian climate disaster.
Hawes shows real talent in painting this world, delivering some quite compelling (if overwrought) imagery of this scary new world, but it’s incongruous with everything that came before, as well as his style of storytelling. The meta stuff does not let up, especially when it should.
It’s overall a daring experiment in storytelling that holds some novelty, but as with most daring experiments, the lesson learned may well be not to repeat it.
Runs until 21 December 2024
