★★★★
Most critics view ‘authenticity’ as a good thing in art, whatever it is that word really means in such a subjective context. Well, Jimmy Carr is a fraud, and that’s his saving grace.
If this dapper yet dirty Englishman’s stand-up were authentic – if he were really telling the truth about his life and leering habits in all these jokes – he’d have been locked up long ago. As it is, he’s doing a five-night run at the State Theatre, and the crowd loves it – save for the miscreant who throws a bottle at him after a relatively tame gag. More on that later.
Carr opens the show by promising “an hour of brilliant jokes, packed into two hours”. His one- and two-liners come quickly and without relent. Some of them are clean. Some of them are about paedophilia; others about death. Relationships, literature, politics, superstition, disability, celebrity – there are few things Carr isn’t willing to make fun of. And while that steers him into significantly objectionable territory, audiences have always granted him a free pass, in the way a shock comic like Jim Jefferies isn’t. You wouldn’t see Carr’s Australian counterpart in a venue like this, and certainly not with such a mixed crowd.
Is this because of Carr’s articulateness? His accent? His fashion sense? It’s probably a little of each, and because he doesn’t leave enough time after each punchline for any jaws to hit the floor before he’s off and running on the next joke. The momentum of the show actually suffers for Carr’s style here – there are no lengthy, anecdotal build-ups to a massive pay-off; no moments of explosive humour to leave the theatre in pieces before everyone can recapture their breaths. If Carr were a boxer, he wouldn’t throw any knock-out haymakers, only jab after jab after jab.
However, when he’s at his best, Carr continues to skirt the boundaries of what comedians can say onstage – and the truth is, that’s still exciting to witness. There’s only that one audience member who takes offence (at a joke about Christianity, of all things) enough to hurl a full water bottle from the mezzanine, and thankfully it misses by miles. At the time, Carr is under the impression it’s not a bottle but a light fitting that’s fallen dangerously from the rigging above his head.
“That was God trying to smite me for that last joke,” he laughs. “He missed, the c**t.” Maybe Carr is blessed. Maybe that’s why he gets away with it.
Jimmy Carr was reviewed at the State Theatre on Tuesday January 19.
