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Stephen Merchant Live
- Fat Tuesdays
- The Salmon and Compass, The Angel, London
- 24 April 2007
Back to The Office job for Stephen…
For someone who has written a series about the perils of lazy comedy played for easy laughs you would expect Stephen Merchant to have something original to offer as a stand up. But for all the expectation and, in fact, hope (he seems such a nice man), I wasn’t fooled by this pretty standard performance.
The problem is that we all love Stephen, don’t we? That lovely sheepish grin, those excited bulging eyes and, of course, the way he lets Gervais take all the credit for his good work. But, as difficult as it is to take, Merchant’s stand up is just not up to his TV performances. His material takes in two main areas - ‘I’m very successful’ and ‘I’m crap in bed’ - and doesn’t bring anything new to either of these oversubscribed stand-up subjects.
In a way this doesn’t matter, the audience is there to see Merchant and they don’t care what he has to say – he’s Stephen Merchant and that’s enough. Jokes that should raise little more than a titter get raptuous applause and gags that should crash and burn take off and soar through the overexcited room. You wonder if he could just take off his glasses, bulge his eyes and say it’s his sex face and get a laugh. Then he does…and he does.
Josh Widdicombe
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