Spanning great swathes of history, philosophy and anthropology, Rob Newman’s stand-up betrays a dizzying breadth of learning, even if his latter-day, bolshie academic persona still contains traces of the childish lecturer he played alongside David Baddiel in the History Today sketches on The Mary Whitehouse Experience all those decades ago.
Engaged in understanding and rebutting illustrious giants of thought such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, perennial objects of fascination to him, he grapples with the existential import of their theories, but always with a view to setting them up for a fall.
With erudite expression and evergreen cheek, he grasps for high-minded connections between classical ideas and modernity, decries philistinism from the depths of his aesthete’s soul, but ultimately mocks Nietzsche for his inexplicable sartorial choices and Sartre for being a mummy’s boy.
There’s an understated feminism to his routines about the canonically recognised Great Men of History, as he dismisses one of Orson Welles’ most oft-quoted maxims for its underlying misogyny. Later, Dorothy Parker’s dazzling social soirees are evoked as the height of wit and cerebral sophistication, their wonderful repartee hilariously contrasted with the close-minded conspiracy paranoia of today’s oafish online commentators.
Chiefly though, Newman just wants to see nobody get too revered. He has the agile intelligence and whimsical devilry to craft a superb, alternative version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar being assassinated, for his environmental policies no less, a victim of short-term, petty barbarism. Or Pythagoras jealously guarding his mathematical knowledge like a Mafioso thug. At the same time, Newman is able to airily dismiss the films of Martin Scorsese and send up the detached eccentricity of his own ivory tower musings. It’s postmodern taking the piss.
There’s a more explicitly declared through-line in the show, that of climate concern. He weaves it in and out, rarely seeming didactic, even if he pushes back against commonly held notions like human over-population being a crucial factor in the impending environmental breakdown.
This is subtle agitprop and elegant satire, which never dints on the jokes and lectures only lightly. You appreciate Newman’s convictions and passions. But he’s also at pains to establish himself as a fool, patiently indulged by his blunt Bulgarian wife and treated at arm’s length by his deceiving therapist.
As befits a keen, questing mind like his’, he returns to some of the same subjects and figures from other recent shows, refining them. But also, to a frustrating degree, simply repeating elements such as his barely sensical Mick Jones’ impression, queasiness over Morrissey’s ever more unhinged opinions and his uproariously funny account of David Suchet’s commitment to method acting as Poirot.
Ennobling of the human condition, wondering and grasping at what it means to be alive, but joyously silly throughout and self-ridiculing all of its own pretension, Where The Wild Things Were is, once again for a Newman show, perhaps too wide-ranging not to dilute itself. Still, he remains an infectious guide to approaching big ideas, pointing out grandiloquent posturing and the futility of holding men up to be gods.
Tour ended | Image: Contributed
