WHEN old school comedian Jim Davidson announced he intended to turn stand-up on its head with his new play, the reaction was a mixture of intrigue and mocking disbelief.
Once the king of Saturday night TV, Davidson’s unsavoury stand-up routines, featuring more derogatory gags about race, gays and girls than heard on a KKK rally, led to a virtual banishment from the television schedules.
Stand Up And Be Counted is a counter backlash by the disgraced star and sees him play bigoted comic Eddie Pierce.
Hired to perform at an AIDS benefit gig in front of 600 gay men, he is forced to share a dressing room with the cream of today’s newest comedians, who just happen to be his fiercest critics — black comic Earl T Richards (a wooden Matt Blaize), gay icon Billy Simpson (a cringe-worthy Lloyd Hollett) and dizzy female talent Ellie Jayne (an admittedly good Rachael Barrington).
The story is a directionless conveyor belt of soap opera cliches and stereotypes with cardboard cut-out characters which wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Eldorado.
The role of Eddie is hardly a stretch for Davidson and while it clearly sets out to satirise the yawning gap between yesterday’s comedians and today’s more politically correct stars, it is executed with all the subtlety of a state-sponsored genocide.
While Davidson claims the character of Eddie is only loosely based on himself, it’s impossible to ignore the elephant in the room — a notoriously bigoted comedian is playing a notoriously bigoted comedian.
The play relies on the audience being in on the joke, but unfortunately any irony is bludgeoned to death by a script which is smeared with the sort of vile, crude and abhorrent humour the comedian is reviled for by his critics.
Of course, one would expect Eddie to be deliberately offensive, but the problem comes when you are expected to be genuinely laughing at his repellent punchlines not scoffing at his expense.
Although he carefully sidesteps any gags which might be construed as racist, he lays the homophobia on thick and an apparently unintended irony is the PC characters who Eddie so despises appear to be only marginally less offensive than our main protagonist.
In the trial of Jim Davidson versus the world, Stand Up And Be Counted serves as the defendant’s deluded testimony as to why washed-up, racist, sexist, homophobic bigots are actually not that bad afterall.
But the verdict is guilty as charged.
Stand Up And Be Counted. Fairfield Halls, Croydon. April 25 to April 30. Call 020 8688 9291 or visit fairfieldhalls.co.uk
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