Comedy review: Richard Herring at Harrogate Theatre

Monday, March 7, 2011



A ball of fire hits the stage of Harrogate Theatre and Richard Herring slumps to the floor.

“I do believe in you, God, ” he whimpers. “I’ve just been showing off, trying to impress girls.”

It’s the silly, whizz-bang climax to a two-hour show about Jesus that made me laugh harder than just about anything I’ve seen since Herring’s last visit to the town a year ago.

To me, he’s the best stand-up around at the moment. While his freeform internet broadcasts, written within a week or entirely improvised, are touched with brilliance, they’re also wildly erratic, almost by definition.

His touring shows, on the other hand, are honed night after night until they’re just about flawless.

Despite a few abrasive lines, this one isn’t the Christian-baiting shock-fest you might fear, but an incisive and entertaining look at Herring’s atheism and his apparently contradictory obsession with Jesus, boasting his usual strong suits of elevated pedantry and faux self-obsession.

In it, he offers his own aphorisms (which bear an uncanny resemblance to the opening lines of TV theme tunes) and parables (a succession of hysterical stories he penned as a child) and attempts to recruit some disciples.

“Ask me if I’m Jesus, ” he tells his first follower.

“Are you Jesus?” the man enquires.

“That is what you say, ” Herring replies.

The comic also tries to answer some of the big theological questions, like: “Why did Jesus always call Simon ‘Peter’? Is it like the way Trigger always called Rodney ‘Dave’?”

Three of his routines are so effective that the audience seems to be collectively willing him to stop so it can catch its breath.

Stupid plonker-wallies

Scrutinising the Ten Commandments, he laments the over-writing and confesses that he once failed to honour his father and mother, calling them “stupid plonker-wallies” to their faces.

Then he pours scorn on page one of Matthew’s gospel, adopting the persona of the disciple’s publisher to declare: “It’s rubbish, Matthew. Begat isn’t even a word.”

Herring knows what he’s talking about, incidentally. He spent four days memorising the opening genealogy, then five minutes on stage taking the mickey out of Booz of Rachab’s name.

Early in the second half, he launches into an inspired riff based on a letter he received about his show from an irate Christian, containing eight instances of people who’ve mocked God and then been brutally killed.

“This is definitely true, ” he says, moving on to the final example. “You can tell by the way none of the people have names and it obviously never happened.”

“Jesus did say: ‘If someone offends thee, send them a threatening passive-aggressive email’, ” he adds.

But Herring does concede that an extremely drunk heckler, who invites the whole audience to a party, may have been sent by God to punish him. When he isn’t removed, Herring speculates that he must be a local dignitary.

In fact, “God” intervenes in more showy fashion near the close, as the lights go off, there’s a small explosion and Herring immediately begins to mock-repent.

That takes us into the unexpectedly reverential final spiel, where the comedian becomes more serious, ultimately expressing his admiration for Jesus and for Christian values, detached from his distaste for organised religion.

Along with two extended dream sequences - in which Herring engages in a bike race with Jesus - it effectively crystallises the dichotomy at the heart of the show, if slowing the laugh-rate a little.

Early in the set he’d asked who really believed Jesus was the son of God.

I’m not really one for audience participation, but I figured this was quite important, so I raised my hand.

At the end, he asks from the stage if he’s managed to change my mind.

I’m afraid not, I say.

Great show, though.
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This article was written by Rick Burin and appeared on Page 21 of the Harrogate Advertiser, March 11, 2011.

Comedy review: Richard Herring at Harrogate Theatre - March 1, 2010

The comedian's Hitler Moustache show is extraordinarily good. Here's why...



Richard Herring is worrying about how history will remember him.

The comic, in Harrogate for the latest leg of his Hitler Moustache tour, has recounted the fear that if he went to his parents' golden wedding anniversary with the square of facial hair he'd grown specially for the show, that might well spoil the celebrations.

"And I know that would be the only photo of me left in 200 years," he says.

"My family would be looking at it, saying: 'Your great-great uncle Richard? My best guess is that he was a Nazi paedophile.'"

Once more Herring is making himself the butt of his gags and while his edgy humour might not be to everyone's taste, the 300 people who've snapped up tickets for his Harrogate Theatre show are laughing fit to burst.

The main focus of his set is racism and judging people by appearances, centred on his attempt to reclaim the toothbrush moustache for comedy, but loaded with broadsides at the BNP and liberal culpability in their recent successes.

Big commitment

He acknowledges that the moustache "is a big commitment, to make what is essentially quite a glib point".

Still, he hopes the look will take him from playing small beer halls to headlining stadiums, as it did for the last guy.

The material dealing with racism is staggeringly good, with an extended bit on 'why racists are less racist than you' that's positively inspired.

"The most extreme racists only see two kinds of people: black and white," he says.

"You see about 170. They're so much closer to thinking that everyone is the same."

In his 90-minute set, he'll ruminate on religion, his commitment to his art and the theft of his iPhone, though his freewheeling style allows for numerous absurdist asides and some concessions to pure childishness.

Heaven

He tells the audience that Hitler is looking down at him from heaven, launching a routine about Michael Jackson's supposed entry to the kingdom of God that passes into gleefully silly territory.

"I heard about the die-hard fans gathering outside the hospital after Jackson's death," he said.

"I thought: 'What are the Die Hard fans doing there?'

"That's completely inappropriate. When Bruce Willis dies, that will be the time for them."

Emerging after the interval, Herring says mock-apologetically: "There aren't really any jokes in the second half of the show, I just have a go at you", but it's just a sign that the blistering, deeply funny deconstruction of racism and racist language is about to resume.

A sequence analysing a BNP election leaflet satirises the claim that the main parties are proposing mass immigration, before Herring returns to aiming digs at his audience's inconsistency.

Race

Jokes about Nick Griffin's appearance are not OK, he says, but it's alright to do a generic German impression.

"Is that racist? No, Germans are not a race. They wanted to be, but hey are not."

That throwaway remark epitomises Herring and his show - dark, challenging, informed and with a sense that this swaggeringly assured comic knows exactly where he's heading.

The theme of Hitler Moustache, emerging quietly and seamlessly from the gimmicky set-up, is that all we must do to see off fascism is to vote.

Herring is just about the best comedian we have right now, his incisive material elevated by apparently effortless delivery.

And if he occasionally attempts to play on a Harrogate-Leeds rivalry that doesn't really exist, that's a minute price to pay for an extraordinary show: important, enthusing and consistently hilarious.
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This article was written by Rick Burin and appeared on Page 25 of the Harrogate Advertiser, March 5, 2010. For our interview with Richard Herring, click here.

An interview with Richard Herring

"I didn't want to preach to the converted."



Hitler's moustache will be on show in Harrogate on Monday.

The offending square of facial hair, once modelled by Charlie Chaplin but now more associated with pure evil, will be attached to the face of the excellent stand-up comedian, Richard Herring. Herring’s excoriating, sporadically childish assault on racism and liberal mores – Hitler Moustache – comes to Harrogate Theatre this week.

The comedian says he had been wondering “why this once quite fashionable moustache wasn’t allowed any more”, so last year he decided to fashion one for himself, reporting the results in his weekly podcast, recorded with broadcaster Andrew Collins. He says: “I did it in the podcast – I had a Hitler moustache in the house, just to see how that felt. I was a little bit nervous about what would happen to me and how liberals would respond. I was thinking about whether that would make racists more liberal than liberals and I came up with the routine from that.”

BNP

The show changed direction after the BNP’s election success in June, with the comedian taking aim at voter apathy. “I had the moustache for a week and I thought I would have to do it again, but the day I had chosen was the day of the BNP’s success,” Herring says. “I had to think: ‘Is this going to mean something else today?’ It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for people to assume I was celebrating the BNP’s success. They had been successful because people hadn’t gone out and voted and I wanted to talk about how voting is important and how there must be something better than being represented by a racist.”

The show also plays around with its audience’s prejudices and preconceptions. “It has to have a substance to it, otherwise it’s just a 42-year-old man with a Hitler moustache,” Herring says. “And I didn’t want to be preaching to the converted, so a lot of it is about liberalism.”

Not that the show is remotely po-faced. “It’s funny all the way through and a little bit childish. My comedy isn’t for everyone – this is quite an edgy show,” he says.

Racism row

Hitler Moustache caused a brief storm last year, after Guardian journalist Brian Logan claimed Herring was one of “the new offenders”, quoting lines from the comedian’s show that the comic says were taken out of context and portrayed him as racist. “I thought it was awful, that I could get killed in the street after the way I appeared in that article – and justifiably so,” Herring says. “A man with a Hitler moustache, who supposedly hates Pakistanis? I can understand why that might make someone angry. But it worked out alright in the end - it meant everyone was talking about the show and coming to see it. I should probably give Brian Logan a cut.”

Herring, who was a TV regular in the ‘90s as part of a double-act with Stewart Lee and has written for and appeared in sitcoms, sketch comedy and panel shows, says stand-up is his favourite medium. “Stand-up wasn’t really my forte - it is now,” he says. “It’s about that immediate reaction from an audience. If I had to choose one thing to do for the rest of my career, it would be stand-up.”

Podcasts

Herring has also embraced podcasting - creating audio shows that can be played on a computer or MP3 player. As well as making more than 100 podcasts with Andrew Collins, he has created a topical sketch and stand-up show - As It Occurs to Me (AIOTM) - with each episode written during a single week and recorded live at the Leicester Square theatre in London.

“I quite like the rawness of it,” he says. “It’s very stressful and it uses up a lot of time, but I really believe that eventually talent and hard work will pay off and things will happen for you. The great thing about podcasts is that I can just do it, rather than sitting at home waiting for people to OK my script.” Eight more episodes of AIOTM are planned for May and June, with another to be recorded at the Edinburgh Fringe.

As for the Hitler Moustache tour, Herring says it’s been “pretty good” so far, and he’s looking forward to coming to Harrogate. “You don’t really get much idea of a place when you only come for a day, but the theatre is really lovely,” he says. “I remember some swanky looking shops, as well.”

That’s more of a commendation than the town got from Sean Hughes, anyway. When he played Harrogate last year, he said the town was "the kind of place they hide Nazi war criminals". So does Richard think that will help him fit in? “Hopefully, yes, ” he says, laughing.
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This article was written by Rick Burin and appeared on Page 19 of the Harrogate Advertiser, February 26, 2010.