Has the advent of trauma-comedy been a boon to standup, broadening its emotional range? Or has it, as the sceptics argue, replaced tears of laughter with tears of sympathy? I’ll meet those sceptics halfway tonight: John Robins’ Howl is both more and less than a comedy show. It finds the 41-year-old in recovery from alcoholism but still wrestling with “the problem of myself”, and speaking candidly about both. There are as many passages of raw confessional as there are jokes. It’s less funny than Robins’ previous shows, because, more starkly than in the past, it depicts his high-anxiety antics as not (just) as a hoot, but a sickness too.
That can’t help but impede your laughter. On paper, Robins’ central routine in act one is comedy gold, as he overthinks to the point of psychological collapse the simple purchase of a slotted spoon. One can imagine Rhod Gilbert – or indeed previous versions of Robins – turning this into something uproariously manic and ridiculous. It’s amusing here too, as our host weighs up the shallow shape of one spoon (“based on the sort of palm you would present to a horse”) against the worrying cheapness of another. But it’s also sad: Robins emphasises the emotional truth of the episode, and of a life paralysed by anxiety, controlling impulses and resentments that could only be stilled, temporarily, by booze.
