Common as it now is for well-loved figures to bring their life stories, gossip and opinions to the touring stage, one seldom mistakes these “An audience with …” events for actual standup comedy. So it’s caps doffed to film-maker John Waters, much of whose 90-minute Barbican appearance is comedy in all but name. It finds the so-called “sultan of sleaze” weighing in on woke culture, cracking wise about Covid, and imagining the ways he might yet, aged 76, reinvent himself. Given that he is presenting it twice in one night, this show is a motor-mouthed and on-point performance to put many a professional standup to shame.
Admittedly, there are more smiles than laughs – unsurprisingly, given Waters claims to hate jokes. What we get instead is attitude. Here is a career provocateur with finite respect for the sensitivities of our culture-wars moment. There’s no sacred cow he won’t prod (“I wish Greta Thunberg would run off with Barron Trump”), no infraction of good taste he won’t relish. He may worry he’s turning into a reactionary, but only as a pretext for some bull-in-china-shop (and not remotely consistent) rumination on gender fluidity, modern dating and “respectable gays”. (“We’re weakening the pervert brand!”)
