Henning Wehn, self-named German Comedy Ambassador, arrived at Salford's Lowry Theatre this evening as part of his latest tour in which he tries to tell the British people to simply, Get On With It!
We are asked to vote for whose fault we think it is - and if our answer is deemed funny enough it might get read out on stage or might even win us a bottle of German alcohol!
However before Wehn himself gets on with it, we have a warm-up half hour, which would normally be given to an up-coming stand-up artiste trying to make his or her mark on this tough circuit; but instead we had Wehn himself delivering warm-up material. If you have never been to one of his shows before then you might have laughed a little or found some of these anecdotes and jokes slightly humorous as he self-effacingly gives us reasons why Germans are better than English but why he loves England, lives here and will never go back to the 'Fatherland'. This part of the show being titled, 'A Beginner's Guide To Living In The UK As A Foreigner'. If you have seen his shows before however, you will know that this routine has been performed many many times. The only thing new here was an anecdote about his visit to the Formula One racing at Silverstone.
In the second half things got even more political. 'Get On With It' of course meant Brexit, and Wehn wanted to share his opinions and cause a little contention [which he did on several occasions - there were even a couple of instances where frost descended over the entire theatre] as he tried to have an unbiased discussion about a subject which has preyed on the minds and been at the forefront of every adult's political thinking for well over two years. Yes, it is indeed time to 'get on with it!', but having a German comedian telling us this was something not many of us wanted to hear. We wanted COMEDY! That is what we had paid for, that is what we had come for.. we wanted to LAUGH, to be transported from the quotidianal mundane and to LAUGH! Sadly the laughs were few and far between in this longer hour or so set.
He talked of tolerance: something we do when we really can't stand someone but haven't the guts to tell them. He talked of acceptance, and how all people have different view points on acceptability, and different expectations of accepting. He talked about integration, and how this also means different things to different people. He observed that given the binary choice between two things, human will always choose the less risky option, it's in our nature. Therefore he opined, that given the binary choice between allowing a Turkish family or a British white family to move into the house next door, you would always choose the British white. [This was one of a few moments where people sucked in through their teeth!] He said that it is a foreigner's duty to learn the language. We have become a more polarised and negative society, and we as a nation are far too easily offended.
He went on to talk about how British people love to banter, but because of the restrictions we have put upon our own society we can't even do that anymore. He suggested that China will be the next nation to take over the world, as Chinese money is being poured into all projects. We should therefore -and this was a joke - simply nuke the Chinese! He then went on to talk about the Royal family, and suggest that in today's society they have become somewhat irrelevant and although the old argument about them bringing in tourism might work for London, he can't see it working for Sunderland!
His set was far more in keeping with a lecture or a party political broadcast than a comedy stand-up, and he didn't really win any true belly laughs the whole evening. He said at the end that he had gone through his entire career without ever receiving a standing ovation ( a call to arms if ever there was one ) and indeed in simple defiance and in need of a laugh, many people did stand who would not have otherwise have done so.
His parting remark was that he would like to have on his gravestone, "He never reached his full potential". I would like to think that that is true of his latest comedy tour, and hope that he tones the politics down and brings on the gags for future gigs; dependant on his geographical location he might just get lynched!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 19/10/18
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