Showing @ The Hut –30th Aug 20:30 1h
Requiring that the masses work nine to five and blow their wages on ever-more extraneous comforts, the prevailing consumer society is perpetually unable to harness those males driven by a once-advantageous level of testosterone and aggression. Whether they try or not, these outmoded macho-men can’t always hold back the hormones, much to the annoyance of more mild-tempered lads like rising Geordie jokester Chris Ramsey. His show’s title refers to a deeply rooted anxiety towards violence or “pubic confrontation” (aggro-phobic), with Ramsey grinningly re-enacting the encounters in his life that made him this way; firstly as a child, with local estate kids passive-aggressively asking Ramsey to “’lend us ten pence’”, and later in life having nights out spoiled by drunken louts with too much to prove. In between we’re given personal anecdotes about such things as his attending The Jeremy Kyle Show, the star of which, we’re unsurprised to learn, is indeed a “prick” in real life.
Ramsey gregariously takes us through a modestly amusing and intimate hour with a routine that feels authentically personal but never self-indulgent. Some might be irked by the casualness with which this seemingly sensitive performer dismisses the audience and “contestants” of the Jeremy Kyle show as “scum” (a condescension of the underprivileged worthy of Kyle himself), something that reflects a general avoidance in the show of viewing aggression with any depth or complexity. Ramsey doesn’t want to investigate the roots of this aggro in society, but merely to vent, with considerable comic ability, the tension it instils in him; as he puts it himself, “This is my therapy session”; an overused line, to be sure, but one that feels particularly justified in this instance.
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