This is an excerpt from Steve Bennett’s review of The New Establishment, a comedy and variety show that’s meant to push boundaries and open minds. It’s been on hiatus in London for over 30 years. I was asked to appear and I loved it.
Finally, the provocative Scott Capurro, comedy’s answer to The Innocence Of Muslims. He likes the frisson he creates, he says, as he purses out bitterly unpleasant things about Mohammed, the Chinese, women, his own family and just about every group you can imagine. There’s certainly nervous laughter at this, mixed with the gasps and the occasional guilty guffaws. It’s naughty and by no means nice, and far from easy listening – and certainly not the sort of stuff that you’d hear on those panel shows, at least not since Frankie Boyle left Mock The Week. Yet if such uncompromising defiance in the face of an audience that don’t quite know what to make of him isn’t in the spirit of the Establishment, I don’t know what is.
Date of live review: Friday 21st Sep, ’12