PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Komedia, Bath (Sun 13 Nov)

COMEDY You'll have been hard-pressed to miss Mr Chris Addison of late. Stand-up comic, writer, actor and allround scrawny smart aleck, his profile seems to have snuck up on us over time - early Perrier Award nominations at the Edinburgh Fringe, his role as hapless Ollie in 'The Thick Of It', BBC radio comedy, Mock The Week's go-to panellist and now those vaguely chucklesome Direct Line ads. How can one man juggle so many different personas? And more to the point - which one would we get tonight?
Well, at the start, it's quite hard to tell. To begin with, doing his own warm-up, he bumbles along, struggling to engage his audience. The delivery is sparky enough, but it feels ill-prepared and somewhat disjointed, Addison flitting between topics without any real flow and plenty of pauses for thought. Lots of clever gags are thrown in ("How the fuck are Greece and Italy out of money? Have you seen the price of olive oil?"), but too often, he sniggers into his fist while contemplating his next move. Still, this is a warm-up show for the bigger tour that follows, and a few blips here and there are par for the course.
After the interval, Addison is rejuvenated, a different man. It's like Harry Redknapp or Alex Ferguson nipped in, gave him a half-time comedy pep talk and chucked a few teacups around for good measure. Slowly, gradually, he gets into his stride, and the chemistry starts to fizz.
He jousts wittily with us, his wiry form padding about the stage, reflecting on the recent UK riots ("Looting in Bath involves people running away with Farrow & Ball paint"): but Addison, as he readily admits, is unwaveringly middle-class himself. It's a surprise to hear him cuss as vitriolically as he does, but for someone as politically astute and passionate as he is, it goes with the territory. His use of the 'c' word brings a collective intake of breath from the audience - a surprising reaction in itself, given the proliferation of such language on today's comedy
circuit. But he's on a roll, and there's clearly no stopping him.
Topics and themes tumble out, both political and social, all brilliantly observed and amusingly skewed - men steering their women by the buttocks, David Cameron offering free tampons and and Lambrinis for female voters, the Daily Express's stance on immigration, the Royals ("they're not like us - you've never ended up in a part of the house you never knew existed"), and Prince Philip ("a genuinely funny man in a weird job"). And he takes almost too much glee in showing off the camp, German and Chinese accents he loves to annoy his wife with at home.
Rattling through at a frantic pace, diversifying off at verbose tangents, riffing on microwaves and um, pheasant-wanking, but still retaining cohesion and regaining his train of thought without missing a beat, Addison is like a seasoned lecturer on speed. He clearly revels in what he describes as a "very mild form of fame", making him "successful enough for deep-fill sandwiches." On tonight's evidence, it surely won't be too long before he's munching on quail. (Velimir Ilic)

Copyright Velimir Ilic 2011