Ivor Tymchak attends the play ‘Donald Robertson is not a stand up comedian’ by Gary McNair at Unity Works in Wakefield. It was good but was it comedy?…
The brick-walled backdrop of comedy venues is such a classic meme of comedy that I couldn’t help wondering as I looked at the scenery on the stage at Unity Works why it remained in use after coming into being from basement shows in New York. My best guess is that it personifies the loneliness of the comedian often banging their head against a brick wall, trying to escape the prison of indifference.
‘Donald Robertson is not a stand up comedian’ by Gary McNair is very definitely a theatrical play about the eponymous Donald who is an aspiring stand-up comedian trying to win over his persecutors with comedy. The ‘set’ is always located on a comedy venue stage. What follows is a five-act play exploring what comedy is, how it works and what it attempts to achieve. Although light on jokes it does contain a lot of humour.
Gary gives an assured performance although my only criticism of his acting would be that his portrayal of a nervous beginner wasn’t embarrassing enough – I didn’t believe in the pain.
He tells the story of how he meets Donald, a young and awkward schoolboy, on a bus trying to tell jokes to the unappreciative passengers. What develops is a mentoring relationship between the two and a brutal investigation into the ruthless laws of comedy – it’s kill or be killed.
The parts of the play that deconstructed comedy were signalled with a lowering of the lights and a conspiratorial hushed conversation between Gary and a member of the audience sitting near the stage. On one occasion this complicity backfired when an audience member decided to ‘help’ Gary with a joke of his own. To give Gary credit, he rode the bump in the road well but it cracked the glass of the fourth wall; comedy actively tries to destroy the barrier between audience and comic to make a personal connection whereas theatre seeks to build one up and only allow vicarious interaction. Here we had a pretence of intimate vulnerability but in reality it was an ‘act’ which is why I made it clear that this is very definitely a play.
The acoustics in the room were not great; Gary’s Scottish accent and a PA that was too quiet meant that I missed many crucial lines. I managed to divine enough of the story though to intellectually enjoy the performance. Even the twist at the end wasn’t sufficient to involve me emotionally. If I had any criticism of the production at all it would be the lack of a real emotional hit – some painfully honest revelation about humanity to make me wince.
The play tells a familiar story amongst comedians and can be crudely summed up by the classic Lee Evans joke of how, as a schoolboy, he discovered humour could help him with bullying – he told jokes to the kids as he stole their dinner money off them.