Stuart Laws Has To Be Joking? – Alphabetti Theatre, Newcastle

Stuart Laws is in an open relationship. He and his girlfriend have welcomed a third into their lives. And that third is the audience of his current tour.

The conceit of this tour is that Laws is starting a relationship with the assembled audience, kicking off with basic small talk, which he confesses (and hilariously illustrates) he is terrible at. This set up is perfect for Laws whose nervous energy matches that of someone on a first date, as he rambles about inappropriate subjects or flies off on a surreal tangent. This also allows him to demonstrate his amazing ability to improvise. The show never feels like a fully scripted monologue to a captive audience, and instead of talking at the crowd, Laws talks to them, asking questions and seemingly moulding the set to their responses and to the overall crowd reaction. However, there is also clearly structure within the set as illustrated by numerous call-backs and running jokes that show that Laws is a lot sharper than he conveys. Having been on the stand-up circuit for over a decade now, Laws is a seasoned professional, although his stage persona doesn’t necessarily reflect that. His meandering and often shambolic style with countless digressions and frequent cases of simply trailing off from a thought, cleverly disguise a very quick wit.

The free-wheeling structure of … Has To Be Joking? is perfect for an intimate venue such as Alphabetti, and it is very impressive to witness Laws create whole comedy bits from a comment from an audience member. In Newcastle at least, all of the audience’s input was extremely supportive – not a heckle among them – which is an illustration of Laws’ likeability and talent. In one instance, early in the show at Alphabetti, a comment to a particular audience member revealed that this person was actually blind. Without pause, Laws took this potentially awkward situation and spun it to create a brilliant running joke that positively involved that person through the rest of the set. Nothing (or very little) of Laws’ material is mean-spirited which in itself is rather refreshing.

Laws also spends a lot of time discussing his resent confirmation as autistic (he tells us that before you are confirmed autistic, you need to be baptised autistic) and openly discusses his struggles while completely avoiding the easy trap of going for cheap sympathy from the audience. It’s here that most of the best material is mined, and Laws’ self-deprecation gives further reason to love him. That and his genius creation of the Big Five Bodily Expulsions: everyone knows what a Number One and a Number Two is – use your imagination for numbers three through five.

The sentiment then shouldn’t be Start Laws Has To Be Joking, but rather Stuart Laws Must Keep Joking. The world is a much better place for it.

Reviewed on 16th April 2025. Continues to tour the UK until June.