The comparisons with stand up comedy in
Gary McNair’s previous work were always misleading: he did stand up on stage
and make the occasional joke, but his seriousness connected him more closely to
the spoken word artists. But by taking these comparisons as inspiration for Donald Robertson is not a Stand Up Comedian,
McNair has made peace between his intelligence and amiable persona. He does
tell a couple of jokes around the middle of his monologue, but the thrust of
his story is a sharp deconstruction of both the need to be funny and the state
of contemporary savage stand up.
If McNair hasn’t become a shock comedian,
his persona has certainly toughened up. His asides to the audience, explaining
each comic strategy, operate as sardonic deconstructions of the comedian’s art
and soften his more aggressive moments. After warming up with a series of
failed jokes, using Paul Claydon’s stark lighting design to give the impression
of a montage, McNair eases into his story. He meets a young boy and tutors him
in the way of the comic. Through imbibing McNair’s advice, young Donald becomes
a success by stabbing his master in the back.
McNair’s vision of comedy is bleak: it
becomes a survival strategy in a world of bullies and victims. Donald has the
dream of escaping his victimhood through bad jokes, but McNair encourages him
to take a more aggressive approach. The two strands of the tale – a meditation
on getting laughs and an ironically poetic version of The Karate Kid – mesh elegantly, allowing McNair to expose the
viciousness of the stand up, undercut sentimentality and temper the humour to
his thoughtful conclusions.
McNair is at his best when he reveals the
tactics behind his monologue, or describes a specific episode of Donald’s
journey. He avoids representing too much vicious comedy, preferring
explanations of how its nastiness performs a social function. The joke is
inevitably aimed at someone, and is an attempt to order a hierarchy. Anger,
muses McNair, connects people.
Against the increasingly unpleasant
roughhousing of comedians like Frankie Boyle, McNair considers the role of the
joke in building communities. It’s a technique to create insiders and
outsiders, to affirm one group’s superiority. Even the self-deprecation, which
McNair has used in past pieces and is a feature of Reginald D Hunter’s skill at
disguising his nastiness, is exposed as a trick to gain sympathy.
McNair’s analysis is unsparing – without
mentioning particular acts, he attacks the fashion for brutal comedy,
assimilating it into his own reflective process and draws an unsentimental picture
of school-yard brutality. That he takes time to win over his audience, and adds
an epilogue that smartly deconstructs his persona’s confidence adds to both the
charm and the bite.
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