Comedy / mark watson
Review: Mark Watson, Tobacco Factory Theatre
The sight – in the third row, three minutes into your homecoming gig – of a classmate you’ve not seen since junior school a quarter of a century ago might discombobulate a lesser comic. Not so Mark Watson.
Watson, who grew up in Shirehampton and attended Henleaze Junior and Bristol Grammar Schools, is remarkably composed about eyeballing his old school chum at the start of this evening of inspired, wide-ranging stand-up.
Or perhaps ‘composed’ is not the word: Watson is, rather, a twitching mass of nervous energy, right from the start of the gig where, in semi-darkness, he jogs on the spot to Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’ while latecomers shuffle in. Doubts, anxieties, questions, a hyper-alert mind coming up with witty, articulate responses to things almost before they have happened: these are the mainstays of Watson’s questing, inventive comedy.
Much of tonight, as it must be, is scripted stuff, dealing largely with Watson’s perceived flaws in his character: an awkwardness around others, an over-eagerness to please that can often produce the very opposite result (try not to stand behind Watson when he’s fumbling for change at a post office); and, at times, a debilitating claustrophobia and need to be away from the noise of modern life.
He enacts this last fear with particular brio, recreating – with the help of a couple of game audience members – the occasion when a Thomas the Tank Engine film launch, a haranguing press officer and a stubborn four-year-old in a playtent brought about a personal apocalypse.
The backbone of his set, then, is one man’s struggle with the noise and confusion of modern life – but much of tonight is also spent in inspired riffing with the audience. The payback Watson gets for all that anxiety is one of the fastest minds in the business, and he’s able to improvise brilliantly with whatever comes his way, from latecomers via random audience outbursts to the moment when he has to leave the stage to do a bit of maintenance involving some air-con and a fire door.
And Watson’s conclusion, at the end of two hours of thrilling verbal riffing, beautiful anecdotes and language that makes you purr with pleasure? “Being a human is bloody hard work.”
True enough. But he makes being a comedian look a breeze.
Mark Watson plays the last of three nights at the Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol on Tuesday, 18 November. For more info and to book tickets, visit http://www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/mark_watson_flaws/
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