‘This is going to be one of the most legendary nights in comedy history!” raves the compere. But we’ll be the judges of that. You’ve got to pick through much myth-making to get to the meat of this rare Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle double whammy. But maybe the hype is justified. These are arguably the two greatest US standups of their generation, and both are hot-topical too, if not always for lovely reasons. Rock got walloped at the Oscars live on TV; Chappelle’s routines about trans people prompted a hundreds-strong staff walkout at Netflix. With background noise that loud, and the claims of their numerous hype men ringing in our ears, can the pair’s comedy possibly make itself heard?
It can – particularly Rock’s, with the caveat that much of it is rehashed from his recent Ego Death tour. He’s stronger here than in that solo show, with some of the lesser, domestic material culled and a tighter focus on his antic comedy and often nuanced thinking about socio-politics. His race material runs provokingly counter to current pieties, as he considers Meghan Markle’s naivety and, in a routine fruitfully developed since the spring, the Kardashians “loving black people more than black people love themselves”. A riff on dating post-#MeToo culminates in a very effective sketch demonstrating that “all sex looks bad in court”.
