I am sitting in a Soho basement surrounded by a delighted, relaxed and highly entertained audience watching John Robertson finish off (as it were) his headline set by offering to use his rather impressive flogger on the buttocks of anyone in the room because “you know you want it”. Indeed I do, but I feel it might not be regarded as acceptable by Entertainment Now, given that I am here to review the show.
Robertson has hurtled us through a decibel heavy twenty minutes which set its tone perfectly when someone in the front row makes the Namaste gesture in his direction and he takes great pleasure (as, indeed, do we all) in explaining that, for fans of fisting, that greeting has an entirely different meaning. Robertson is pretty much the apotheosis of the irresistible force that brooks no immovable object. And the religiously minded, together with fans of Bing Crosby and Coca Cola could well have been deeply upset and offended. But they are not.
You see, it occurs to me, as London’s self-declared premier SM Jew, the Methuselah of Mirth, Ivor Dembina leads us through a night of what is billed as Kinky Comedy that comedy, as well as kink, is about consent. Consent and context. We are not the least upset to be addressed as “perverts”. It is a term of fondness. At a Kinky Comedy night.
We do not find it either intrusive or upsetting to be asked (quite pointedly) whether we are doms, subs or switches-, givers or takers or even money makers. We even admit it publicly. We are at a Kinky Comedy night. Of our own volition. Just en passant, I heard some bloke on a random bit of channel hopping complaining about someone else making racist comments about him, although it transpired that he himself had made a bit of a homophobic insinuation about the guy who had made the racist comment about him. Stay with me.
As I understood the interview, it was all going to be settled in a big grudge fight. ‘Homophobic’ bloke said people (in Manchester, for some reason) had been egging him on to have a go at this ‘racist’ bloke for ages. We then saw some video of various brown blokes beating the crap out of each other while a cheering audience bade for blood. And they got blood. I found it appalling. I never want to see anything like it again. I would ban it. It is horrible. But, disappointingly, Amir Khan and Kell Brook, who really REALLY don’t like each other, are cool to beat the crap out of each other as long as it is in a boxing match, especially, as in this case, on telly, internationally syndicated and ticketed and making huge amounts of money for lots of already rich people. Still. You see my point. It is about consent.
But back to the kink. And the comedy. We are gloriously entertained by Kate Smurthwaite’s engaging tales of her “wildly promiscuous” life. We do not whine that she never makes mention of her careful attention to condoms because – while, in the hands of such an accomplished comic racenteuse, the whole idea of quasi-competitive, unbridled sex sans frontiers sounds fabulously aspirational – we also know that Kate has formulated these selected tales as entertainment, as ‘comedy’. Did I mention that we are at a Kinky Comedy night?
While John Robertson threshes (and would, we feel, gladly thrash at any point, given consent) around onstage as the King of the Kink part of the evening, Scott Capurro gives an absolute masterclass in bleeding the awful and the unspeakable dry of every drop of comedy you never imagined they could contain. Those things of which we must not speak are the electricity that powers his shockingly brilliant set. He is vastly underappreciated for his world class, brilliantly honed skills as a writer and performer. He is a phenomenal comedy technician. Who uses those skills to carve brilliant material out of dark, dark things. Anne Frank and AIDS, the upside of pedophilia, ‘The Gays’ in combat, school shootings, ‘The Gays’ pretty much everywhere, and an eyewatering simile involving the back of JFK’s head that will strain your kegel muscles to breaking point – all are here like a beautiful but slightly unsettling work of art created entirely from poisoned daggers. And we laugh. OK, we gasp. But then we laugh. We are at a Kinky Comedy night. And Scott and Kate and John and even Ivor – who created the concept of sado-Judaism – have form for this sort of stuff.
Coming in the wake of the woke screaming their recreational outrage and demanding the public flaying of Jimmy Carr and the terminally traumatised venting their spleen at Mary Bourke’s vociferous (and if I might say so, very funny) refusal to be administratively reduced, by a woke-fearing NHS, to her reproductive bits and bobs, it was a joy to sit in a room of grownups who understand that you should not come along to a Kinky Comedy night and burst into tears if someone puts dark chocolate sauce on your vanilla ice. Consenting adults. You really need to be both.
As if you did not see where this was going, if you, of your own volition, deliberately watch a brilliant comedian, famous for his comedy craftmanship, his one liners, his precision and his dedication to the dark and the occasionally, arguably, cruel, perform a section of material, within a show called His Dark Materials, that is around and about the death camps in Nazi Germany, and you hear the rhythm of the material, and you stay with it, and you KNOW there will be the painful ‘stinger’ in the perfectly formed scorpion tail…at the very least, there was implied consent.
To paraphrase the delightful John Robertson “you know you wanted it”. Kinky Comedy nights will be happening again – so look out for them. EVEN MORE EXCITING: you can get your Edinburgh Kink on in a Comedy way. Ivor Dembina will not just be up there with his own shows (as will others on the bill) but the Kink will not be kept down and shows will be announced very very soon.
You know you want them.
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