Elliot Steel is not scared to joke about any topics – and he’ll remind you of this fact. However, when issues of political correctness are brought up in comedy, more often certain topics are not totally off-limits as much as they are to be handled with care. In this context, Steel plays around at the edges of what is possible and will, on occasion, leave you looking in the mirror thinking, “did I just laugh about that?” He remains steely faced, deadpan as he asks you to indulge in the darker side of your imagination.
Sometimes, he’ll tap into tired tropes, like jokes about blue haired girls; and tirades about culture wars, while along the right lines, lack the sophistication to be entirely convincing. He also has to remind us that he’s left-wing, which feels slightly forced in between unrelated asides. However, there are shades of a skilful satirist about him, and when he dances on that line well, he can leave you reeling from the shock and awe his lines produce. You’ll be wondering he’s going with something, and bang, it hits you like a ton of bricks.
He eventually downshifts into something more personal, somehow without making this tonal shift overly jarring, and keeps the audience engaged as he relays tales close to his heart. It’s still speckled with jokes about cancer and Nazis, but he manages to take his show in an unexpected direction, and his diatribes go some way to capturing the imagination. It’s a difficult show to recommend because of its sometimes childish fixation with shock and risqué comedy, but there’s certainly more than meets the eye with Elliot Steel.
Elliot Steel: Soft Boi Core
Underbelly
Until August 25 (excluding the 12th) 21:45