PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Widcombe Social Club, Bath (Thur 1 Dec)

COMEDY This sold-out evening with Germany’s comedy ambassador does have some carols in German, and Herr Wehn does wear a Santa hat, but otherwise it has burgher-all to do with Christmas. Except that it’s extremely jolly.

Wehn’s schtick is based entirely on ignoring John Cleese’s ‘don’t mention the War’ stricture. He mentions the War, in fact both Wars; he mentions the Holocaust, the Fuhrer, the Blitz - anything and everything in fact that might be said to be a sensitive area in Anglo-German relations. Is it tasteless? No, this is no Frankie von Boyle; Wehn has a superb knack of taking on xenophobic prejudices of all kinds (not just English for Germans, and Germans for English; but Germans for Dutch, Greeks and even East Germans; English for Scots; Scots for Irish; I could go on) with a beautifully-timed sense of irony.

He constantly wrongfoots your expectations, using cod right-wing rants of his own and subverting them every time with a cunning twist at the end. Like getting the audience to sing and clap along to a German ditty that no-one understands, then revealing it’s a Hitler Youth song. “And you all just clapped along, didn’t you, without thinking.” Faintly guilty middle-class English silence, then, “That was our mistake too.” Brilliant.

And the whole thing is made the more fun by his distinctive London/German mongrel speech (he’s lived in Tooting for a decade). All in all, a deliciously sly and subversive rampage through the multifarious world of national stereotypes; and no-one does it better. It’s likely we’ll be hearing plenty more of Wehn's strangled Tootonic vowels on our airwaves. It’s certainly to be hoped so. (John Christopher Wood)

Copyright John Christopher Wood 2011