Loath as we are to quote other publications on these pages, The List’s ‘Richie Brown is not for the casual viewer’ which adorns his poster is both spot on and well wide of the mark. Brown’s unvarnished brand of nihilism is definitely more punk gig than Pleasance Courtyard. But if he bottles it in the right way, the casual viewer would be very entertained by his original, misanthropic takes.
His robotic cardboard-box-headed everycomic delivering “insert gag here” punchlines is a stone cold classic. Seen before, but always welcome, it’s rolled out brilliantly as an opener here. He’s given himself a tough act to follow, so it’s good he has some slapstick violence video clips in his back pocket because these too are failsafe funny. Brown’s fellow circuit comics set him up for some top visual grotesquery.
It’s the straight stand-up that proves The List’s point. As he gets stuck into animal rights, mental health, and the royals, there’s real inventive thinking; there are some brilliant lines. You’re willing him to deliver them with the conviction of one of the ‘happy comics’ with ‘sexy depression’ that he rails against, oblivious to what we think. Instead, there always seems to be one eye on the fellow travellers in the room, with over-analysis of how this one normally lands or that one ‘splits rooms’ which reads more like an actual anxiety than a staged one. Crack on with splitting the room!
Brown came close to winning Scottish comedian of the year in 2019, and has both a brilliantly delivered sight gag and a playing-against-type anecdote about it. Covid may have knocked his momentum, but the expectation of what he may have to offer is still there. The ideological purity of what he’s doing does give it the air of an underground meeting, a safe space for assorted radicals, outcasts and metal fans (the three aren’t mutually exclusive). To change that up, he’d have to be less the real, depressed Richard Brown and more in persona as Richard Brown Misanthrope, steamrollering us with hard-left comic fury. Whether he would sacrifice authenticity to attract the casual viewer in that way is a different matter.