Comedy / alan davies
Review: Alan Davies, Colston Hall
For a very famous man, Alan Davies gives the same respect to his audience that we give him. He banters with his fans like a pro, as we take the mickey out of Yate, praise Thornbury and cheer Bristol.
But despite the back and forth, this is a very personal gig, about two dads: Alan’s own, and himself as a dad.
The first half explores life with a widowed father totally underprepared for parenthood: episodes like the latter’s chilling reaction to a too-expensive tennis ball make you feel both horror and sympathy for Alan.
But there are also moments of comic genius, memorably his teenage friend chugging round the Bay of Capri on his own sexual energy. Such turns of phrase hint at a great writer – and Davies is at his best when he’s riffing on real life, not just observing it.
By the second half, Davies himself is the dad, navigating home life with his two young kids. But this is not fatherhood as we know it, for to this paranoid dad even an open dishwasher is a potential booby trap. It’s a good thing he went to the interval early when a woman was taken ill, as for much of the second act he shares an obsession with medical emergencies – fear of his children’s death at the hands of a baby chair, the certainty of decapitation in a soft play area, the dangers of dogs.
This is when Davies is at his most comfortable: imagining violent fantasies and attributing the worst intentions to those around him (most hilariously his tiny daughter), cussing and plotting. Although the subject matter is predictable territory, it’s unpredictably funny.
It’s a painfully confessional evening, and by the end of it we get the feeling that we know Alan Davies better.
Do we? Perhaps. Either way, we know we like him.
Alan Davies was at the Colston Hall on Friday, 5 December. For upcoming comedy gigs there, visit http://www.colstonhall.org/whats-on/comedy/
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