Comedy Unleashed: The new free speech comedy night
Recent Chortle review, February 14 2018, of a marvellous concept show in London’s fashionable East End. I’m not usually a big fan of themed comedy shows, but the idea that comics should have free reign is hugely appealing. Enjoy.
By Steve Bennett of Chortle.com, at the Backyard Club, London
There’s always somebody who has to ruin it.
Comedy Unleashed has been widely advertised as a new free-speech stand-up night, where comedians have the safe space to say what they want, without fear of falling foul of the politically correct police.
Yet during the bonfire of taboos that is Scott Capurro’s headlining set, one front-row punter was drawn to his feet to heckle. His vocal complaint was that the American provocateur was ‘very unimaginative’ – although the complaint cannot be separated from a suspicion that our man found something not to his taste in a wilfully confrontational set that covered rape, ‘retards’, AIDS, Holocaust denial, Islam, female genital mutilation, Madelaine McCann and transsexuality – all with the empathy and compassion of a Britain First supporter.
The rest of the audience at East London’s Backyard Comedy Club joined Capurro in slapping down the interruptor, but the irony of someone taking offence at such as this is inescapable.
Capurro, arch and acidic in his baiting of audience sensibilities, also elicited a more widespread boo when he suggested that Brexit might not be such a good idea, an indication that a free-speech night has been taken, in some quarters, as a place where jokes HAVE to be right-wing and anti-EU. Those points of view allegedly so forbidden in Britain, a Conservative-run country heading out of the common market with the rabid backing of almost every national newspaper… Still, it’s a failing of the left that its concerns for inclusivity mean it has lost the moral high ground on free speech in many people’s eyes.
A straw poll conducted by compere Dominic Frisby revealed that the Comedy Unleashed audience had a make-up almost unheard-of in comedy. ‘Who voted Tory?’ he asked. A noticeable majority cheered. Same for Leave, although the opposite sides were well-represented, too. He made a good job of explaining the ethos of the night: that we should be able to laugh at viewpoints we agree with as well as the other side (a subtlety that may have gone over our heckler’s head). And surely a bit less us-and-them tribalism would be good for everyone.