This will now be the third time I have had the pleasure and privilege of witnessing the chaotic but intelligent mind of Mr Alasdair Beckett-King in action. The last time was a few years' ago as part of The Buxton Fringe, and Beckett-King has grown as a comedian since then immeasurably. He is much more confident and relaxed in his sets, and presents a personable and approachable persona, slipping easily between a secondary school philosophy teacher and a Pre-Raphaelite Viking with his, what he calls, mild whimsy.
To his enormous credit, he did not use a warm-up comedian to do the first 20 minutes of the evening, but instead, chose to do this himself, making the first half a little short, but we still were given a full hour plus in the second, and despite the seemingly lack of coherence with his sets, the call-backs and the ending an absolute delight and extremely clever. Beckett-King is not a comedian one should underestimate.
During the course of the evening we were taken through subjects as varied as the French language, dentists, Shrek, cartoons of the 1980s, bullying, sad jokes, veganism, and several items requiring the help of a screen to the rear of the stage which aided and ameliorated his musings, such as advertising slogans for birds!
Beckett-King used no swear words at all during the whole stage time, except for one, where he was acting the part of an East End lout, and so that had to include expletives, but other than that, here was a comedian who relied on the material and his portrayal of it in order to garner the laugh, and not punctuating his material with effs and jeffs like almost all of today's comedians. Congratulations.
A very intellectual but hilarious sideways look at topics vagarious, all in his surreal but disconcertingly earnest way. The time went by so quickly that I did not believe he had been on stage entertaining us for a whole hour when he wound it all up! So, to sum up this review in one word.... brilliant!
Reviewer - Alastair Zyggu
on - 2.4.26
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