Jon Richardson’s first full-length show in 2007, Spatula Pad, was about the seemingly unpromising subject of having obsessive compulsive disorder, and being a misanthrope to boot. But it deservedly gained him an If.Comedy Award Best Newcomer nomination, which was followed by another in the main category of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for last year’s show, This Guy at Night, about how his perfectionism has ruined his relationships.
Since then, Richardson has become a regular guest on television panel shows, where his quick wit and engaging personality are a winning combination, and now he’s touring with Don’t Happy, Be Worry, which covers the same sort of territory, of a man so wound up in his own neuroses that even things that make him happy - football, for instance - have the capacity to enrage him at the same time.
Richardson isn’t, then, a clutch-your-sides-laughing comic; rather he’s a gentle and ever-smiling anecdotalist who sees the world in a rather skewed way. You have sometimes to be patient as he digresses from his point to fixate on a kink in his microphone flex or an onstage table that should be situated just so, but in travelling down the byways of Richardson’s overactive mind the rewards come in unexpected ways; his sudden bursts of what appears to be rage - for instance that footballers are paid obscene amounts of money - quickly becomes a surreal fantasy on how their off-field misdemeanours should be punished.
He’s also an accomplished mimic and several of his stories are given extra pleasing detail as he fills in the voices, whether it’s about reading for a part in the upcoming Hobbit film or recounting the tale of a surprised Yorkshireman who found an alligator skull while out walking - “That’s not local to here, I thought...” As you may imagine from that segue (my own, but fairly typical of the evening) there’s little or no narrative structure to this show, but its meanderings are part of the charm.
It’s an odd hour, to be in the company of someone who says he hates everything but then proceeds to be consistently funny about life and its foibles without a trace of bile - even when he’s being deliciously cruel or un-PC about those who annoy him. But therein lies the trick of Richardson's performance, as he faces an hour obsessing about that microphone flex we leave the theatre feeling full of the joys of life.
- Jon Richardson is at Soho Theatre, London W1 until 27 November, then touring until 17 February, 2011
- Find Jon Richardson on Amazon
Watch Jon Richardson live at the Melbourne Comedy Festival:
