We all learned something during lockdown, says James Acaster, and he learned that “I don’t like doing standup comedy”. Wracked with nerves before each gig, annoyed that the wrong people came to his shows, the Kettering comic had hit a wall. This show is his response. For the first time in Acaster’s standup career, Hecklers Welcome takes us back into his childhood to unearth the roots of his love/hate relationship with performance. It also obliges the 38-year-old to embrace audience input. James “has to accept whatever happens”, we’re told pre-show – even if that’s sometimes through gritted teeth.
It’s a two-times gift of a set, then, offering a glimpse behind the curtain of one of the best comics now working, and obliging him to be phlegmatic – which is not his default mode. The first half in particular is fascinating as well as funny, as Acaster interrogates the standup psyche and pores over those moments he’s allowed audiences (too silent, too rowdy) to get under his skin. Then comes his “origin story”, the tale of a spinning-wheel workshop five-year-old James’s granny once delivered at his school. Summoned onstage by gran, Acaster was emotionally overwhelmed – and (pace his therapist) that same fragile infant has been looking over his shoulder at every live appearance since.
Ridiculous? Of course. True? Quite possibly. It certainly makes for a fantastic self-lacerating story, as do its follow-ups, which stake out further staging posts (the humiliating Prince Charles impression; the dog show gone wrong) on Acaster’s journey to tormented star of the stage. As ever, it’s a marvel how he constructs big-yield routines, piece by fastidious piece, from inauspicious beginnings. There’s some endearing ad hoc material, too, as the Off Menu man riffs on the phrase “take [something] to the grave” or impersonates Shrek for the Scottish crowd.
If the gig has an Achilles heel, it’s that the obligation to accept all heckles interrupts its rhythm, and (even while heckles are few and far between) spins a long show even deeper into its third hour. But too much Acaster is still a treat to watch – and perhaps, for the first time, a treat to perform, too?
