Comedy / Richard Gadd
Review: Richard Gadd: Monkey See Monkey Do, The Cube
“Who is the real Richard Gadd?” is the repeated question in this courageous and edgy hour of blackly humorous revelation, winner of last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show.
Scottish comic Gadd literally runs us through a superbly synchronised multimedia soul-search of what it is to be a man, using the above line from an old review, as he turns personal trauma into a quest for his own muddled identity.
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Clad in running gear and jogging throughout on a treadmill Gadd – breathlessly, and via a frantic splicing of background screen images and audio – gives a crazed inner monologue of his state of mind, dealing with anxiety as a result of a male sexual assault on him at a party four years ago.
It’s a nervously funny, painfully honest performance, with the monkey in the title being the metaphor for his own inner doubts, a gradual building up to the searingly horrific revelation as recorded sessions with his analyst are lip-synched on screen by two upside-down chins.
Gadd took up running to take his mind off what had happened to him, but his anxiety grew and his notions of manhood were turned on their head. Here, as he burns the miles on the treadmill he refers to the ‘Man’s Man final in Mansfield, hosted by Jason Manford’ to prove his masculinity and battles his inner demons as he increasingly loses focus of what, indeed, the term means.
For a comic known for his shows full of sex, drugs and gore, and his 2015 Edinburgh Fringe hit Waiting for Gaddot, Gadd in Monkey See Monkey Do bravely faces up to what has happened to him and shares it with an audience, warts and all, the laughter for once taking second place to a quite poignant vulnerability.
It’s strong, compelling, stuff, skilfully orchestrated and put together with a massive degree of nerve on Gadd’s part.
Richard Gadd: Monkey See Monkey Do was at the Cube, Bristol on Wed, March 22 and again on Thur, March 22, though the latter gig is sold out. For more on Richard, visit www.unitedagents.co.uk/richard-gadd
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